The First Time
by Terp4Life
Summary: Jane does everything for the first time, and Kurt is there for most of them - good and bad.
1. If She Had Known

**Disclaimer: I do not own Blindspot. More like it's the other way around… I've come to realize that THEY own ME. :) (The ... indicate The Script song lyrics, which I also DO NOT own. I'm nowhere near talented enough)**

 _A/N: Thanks to everyone who read and left such kind reviews on Where It All Began. Here's a little something else that just popped into my head in the past few days. It started out as a one shot, but… I'm not really good at writing short fics, so I'm breaking it up in pieces – not sure how many right now. The inspiration for this was in part from a suggestion in_ _ **Brakkari**_ _'s review of WIAB, along with a little help from yet another song from The Script (this song was just in my head the other day, I wasn't even actually listening to it), "For the First Time."_

 _ **...**_

 _ **She's all laid up in bed with a broken heart**_

 _ **While I'm drinking Jack all alone in my local bar**_

 _ **And we don't know how, how we got into this mad situation**_

 _ **Only doing things out of frustration**_

 _ **Trying to make it work but man, these times are hard.**_

 _ **She needs me now but I can't seem to find a time**_

 _ **I've got a new job now in the unemployment line**_

 _ **And I don't know how, how we got into this mess**_

 _ **Is it God's test?**_

 _ **Someone help us 'cause we're doing our best**_

 _ **Trying to make it work but man these times are hard.**_

 _ **But we're gonna start by drinking old cheap bottles of wine**_

 _ **Shit talking up all night**_

 _ **Saying things we haven't for a while, a while yeah**_

 _ **We're smiling but we're close to tears**_

 _ **Even after all these years**_

 _ **We just now got the feeling that we're meeting**_

 _ **For the first time.**_

\- " **For the First Time," by The Script**

 _ **...**_

 _ **Most of her first times included Kurt Weller.**_

It was true, he hadn't been there when she came out of the bag on that cold night in Times Square. That night, the FBI had thought they were dealing with a bomb, maybe a contagious disease…

Instead, they got Jane.

For a long time after that, it seemed to Jane like everything that she did was for the first time, and it was exhausting. She wasn't sure how long after she woke up, having been extremely groggy from the drugs in her system, that it was before she'd met Kurt Weller for the first time. Along with a horrifying collection of tattoos that were all over her, his name was apparently on her back, though she had no idea why. When he'd encouraged her to try to remember something, anything about him, she'd been terrified. It was only natural, since her memory had been wiped blank.

It felt like she'd been manhandled quite a few times in that small space of time between when she'd emerged from the bag and when Kurt sat in front of her, his right hand resting on the metal table beside them. And yet, when she reached out to rest her hand on top of his, and then to touch his face, that was the first time – at least the first time in her memory – that _she_ had made contact with another person, instead of having someone make contact with _her_. Months later, she would wonder fleetingly if that was part of the reason why his touch always seemed to calm her, if that moment had imprinted on her somehow, or if there was some simpler, more logical explanation.

In truth, even as time wore on, it was hard to find many of Jane's "firsts" that had _not_ involved Kurt. There were a few, of course… For example, the first time she tried coffee – and tea, for that matter – had been in Dr. Borden's office. He'd simply brought her one of each and asked her to taste them. It had been meant to be calming, she knew, to show her that she could still learn these small things about herself...

As nice of a gesture as it had been, Jane couldn't help but feel like it was ridiculous. After all, the list of things she would need to try for the first time was never ending… It was enough to give her one anxiety attack after another. The only thing that even began to bring her heartrate back down that day, when her thoughts wound her up so tightly, was walking into the screens room with Zapata, and seeing Kurt there. Never mind that they were staring at monitors plastered with pictures of her tattoos, and their conversation was exclusively tattoo focused… Just being in the room with him made her feel better.

It wasn't simple, of course, going through all of those firsts in such a short period of time, but just by virtue of being the lead agent, so he was in charge of her when she followed them into the field, Kurt had been with her most of the time, and therefore, for most of her many firsts. The first time she tried various different foods – because they did have to eat at some point in the course of their days. The first time she was overwhelmed by any one or more of a million different, unfamiliar emotions – even though he would have been the first to say that he'd never been a guy who knew how to help a crying woman feel better. Somehow, even the emotionally closed off Kurt Weller learned how to find the right words, when it came to Jane.

The list went on. Her first time going to a restaurant – because again, they did have to eat at some point. Her first time having a headache – which is generally what happens when you flip a car on its side, and it's the side you were driving on. And then, of course, the various parts of their job that the team had long since come to think of as routine, and which she didn't remember _doing_ before _,_ but that she somehow seemed to do with ease: her first time chasing down a suspect, her first time narrowly escaping death, her first time being nearby when things exploded… You know, just another day at the office.

There had been so many things that Kurt had been there to watch Jane experience for the first time. At times his heart had ached for her, but other times, certainly fewer of them, he'd been able to share her delight. And even when they weren't happy firsts, for the most part, he'd been there to tell her that it would be okay, that _she_ would be okay. He had never hesitated to let her lean on him, literally or figuratively.

That is, except for the short time when he tried out that whole "remaining objective" thing, which had really just consisted of him acting like an asshole to prove that he wasn't treating her differently than anyone else – which of course, he was.

But between Jane and Kurt… well, their relationship had _always_ been different than any other ones they had with anyone else, and it didn't take long for him to finally see that. They agreed that they were in "this," whatever _this_ was, together. And then it seemed to work again… For a little while.

 _ **The first time she kissed Kurt gave her approximately two minutes of bliss… and subsequently changed her life – and NOT**_ _ **for the better.**_

If she had known that Carter's goons were lying in wait for her…

If she had known that she had done this to herself…

If she had known that Oscar had been her fiancé in her previous life, as well as her handler, and that he was now some sort of self-appointed, protective stalker…

If she had known that she would be forced to betray the only friends she knew in order to keep them safe…

If she had known the things that Oscar would ask – no, _demand_ – of her…

If she had known that Mayfair would die…

If she had known that she was _not_ Taylor Shaw…

If she had known that she would end up _killing_ Oscar…

If she had known that she would end up losing Kurt, the one person who she cared the most about in the world…

… Would she had done things differently? God, yes, _of course_. But hindsight is 20/20, and that was the first of many, many painful days when she learned that, over and over again, until she hated herself just as much as the hated the people who had _helped_ her "do this to herself."

In short, after the first time she kissed Kurt, everything went to hell. Apparently there was a first time for _that_ , too.

That horrible day, Oscar had wanted to wipe her memory – which _wouldn't_ have been a first time, but if he had succeeded, it would have _felt_ like one. It would have reset all of those wonderful, painful firsts she'd had with Kurt by her side… No, she couldn't let that happen. _Not again, not for any reason._

And so in order to stop that, she'd killed Oscar. Was it the first time she'd killed someone? For Jane, yes. But for… _her_ … meaning, the person that should would only learn later had been named Remi, _no_. Not by a long shot.

 _ **The first time she was told that she wasn't Taylor Shaw, her world tilted on its axis**_.

It was one of the last things Oscar had told her that night, before they fought, before she accidentally swung the axe into his stomach in the middle of the burning barn. If it hadn't happened that way, would she have killed him intentionally? There was no way to know, now, but it seemed unlikely that he would have stopped in his attempts to ZIP her again, to erase her memory, so that may just have been the only way to stop him. And because fate had never been kind to her, Kurt had also discovered that she wasn't Taylor Shaw, at almost the same time, by finding the poor girl's remains… and so of course, he thought that she'd known it all along.

And now, if she wasn't Taylor Shaw, if it had all been a lie… _who was she?_ She didn't know. No one seemed to know. She was back to square one, except that no… she only wished she was back at square one. What she had learned about herself… the things she had _done…_ No, she was discovering how blissful her ignorance had been, though it certainly hadn't felt that way at the time.

For the first time, she wished that she could forget.

 ** _..._**

 ** _She's all laid up in bed with a broken heart_**

 ** _While I'm drinking Jack all alone in my local bar…_**

 **...**

And then there was what she had been absolutely certain would be the _last_ of her firsts with Kurt…

Well, in reality, that first had actually been more of a _second_ , if she was being technical _._ When he had stood in her safe hours and pointed a gun at her (okay, Kurt pointing a gun at her _was_ a first, and not one she'd thought it a million years would ever happen), when he'd told her to get on her knees, to put her hands behind her head… When he put the handcuffs tightly around her wrists… well, that _hadn't_ been the first time it had happened to her, only the first time that _he_ had done it. After all, that had been the first thing she had been told when she'd come out of the bag in Times Square.

After that, well… it was better to swim in the black oblivion of her mind. There were to be no more firsts that she wanted to be conscious of, much less to think of even once, and _certainly not remember._ The hatred in Kurt's eyes had been only a very gentle prologue to what she went through after the CIA took her away…

And yet, somehow, she made it out of there. Because while fate may not have ever been kind to her, she had also never been one to let herself be a victim if she could help it, event as a child. For once, her former life as Remi became necessary to her survival as Jane, and if there was a way out of that black site, she would find it. Those CIA agents, as well trained as they thought they were, were no match for her. The first time _they_ realized that was the day she escaped.

 _ **The first time he came looking for her with a gun, she was as angry with him as he was with her. Would she have shot him if he'd been unarmed? She honestly didn't know.**_

Right there in the hallway of that motel, they slammed each other into walls, into the floor, took out months of aggression, anger, betrayal, loathing… maybe even hatred… They took it all out on each other as they fought. In the end, she _had_ had the chance to shoot him. Really, she'd had several, because he'd tossed his gun away early on, at her insistence.

It was the first time she'd even have considered shooting him.

 _Kurt_. The man who had been _everything_ to her. There had been a time when she would no more have considered shooting him than she would have cut out her own heart. But that had been _before_ so many terrible firsts… and some other things that, while she'd trained for them and they weren't firsts, would leave scars on her body that might never heal.

It was hard to remember Kurt in that role, as the one person who was _good to her_ , who could _always_ ground her, steady her. And yet, looking back now, what had he been… _really_? When all was said and done, there had never been a word for what they'd been to each other. Based on how things had ended up, how they'd crashed and burned, it was easy to say that they had been nothing. Nothing _real_ , anyway.

Sadly, this was far from the first time they'd lied to themselves about the other.

After the bitter fight in the hallways of the motel, in which Zapata and Reade had saved Jane from having to make the decision – would she shoot Kurt, or would she not? – when they arrived and pointed _their_ guns at _her_ , she was surprised when a whole new series of firsts with Kurt began.

Her intention had been to finish Sandstorm, whose codename she'd never even heard at the time, on her own. And yet, she'd ended up back at the FBI, though against her will. It wasn't the first time she'd worked with people against her will, that much was for sure. Just like before, once again she was trapped. Sandstorm had threatened to kill Kurt before. Now the FBI had not so indirectly threatened to send her back to the CIA.

Why did it feel like she had only _ever_ been a pawn to be used? Like she had _never_ been anything real to anyone?

 _That's not true and you know it_ , the voice in her head protested.

 _Oh really?_ she replied sarcastically.

She couldn't help but wonder where along the line everything had gone so wrong.

 _ **The first time you didn't trust Kurt was where you went wrong**_ , she told herself bitterly. _You could have prevented all of this._

 **...**

 **… _And we don't know how… How we got into this mad situation_**

 ** _Only doing things out of frustration_**

 ** _Trying to make it work but man, these times are hard…_**

 _..._

 _I should have known that they'd come_ , she told herself bitterly as she was injected with radioactive materials and hooked up to some strange looking machine that would, she was told, tell the team whether or not she was telling the truth. There would be no fooling it the way she could fool a polygraph, she was told, so don't bother trying.

And yet, part of her had believed that she was dead to them, and that they wouldn't care enough to come after her. After letting the CIA torture her… _now_ they wanted to show concern for her? Or they just wanted to help capture her? For what? Information? Reward money? No… they wanted Oscar's group. _Sandstorm_ , they called it. So there she was, a pawn once again. They didn't actually care about _her_. That much was obvious.

 _ **The first time she didn't know which side to trust, and had no one to confide in, was the first time she wondered why she had sacrificed so much to protect them.**_

Things were terrible, bouncing back and forth between Sandstorm and the FBI, but they were better than being with the CIA. She did what she had to do, followed orders, and she wasn't tortured… not _physically_ , anyway. She had infiltrated Sandstorm for the FBI, and as far as Sandstorm was concerned, she'd infiltrated the FBI for them. It was exhausting, the constant pushing and pulling, watching her back and remember what to tell who. No one actually trusted her, everyone tested her loyalty – whether overtly or in secret – again and again. She now watched _both_ groups as an outsider, seeing the value of both of their arguments, some days swayed more by one and other days swayed more by the other.

It was the first time she wondered if she really _had_ done the right thing by allowing the FBI coopt her from her – no, _Remi's_ – mission. She couldn't say for sure if she had done the right thing… or could she?

 _Did they really turn me, though, or did I just change my mind? Or…_ _ **have I**_ _changed my mind?_ When she thought about it, she knew that it wasn't the FBI who had turned her – at least not the first time – no matter how much she might want to blame them for her current predicament. No, the fact was that she was simply no longer Remi. She was Jane, a new person. And Jane wasn't the cold, calculating killer that Remi had been, willing to sacrifice herself completely for what she believed to be the greater good, no matter how violent the means necessary to achieve this "good." To Jane, the ends did not necessarily justify the means, and there were some things that she would _not_ give up.

So she worked with the team, despite the fact that they hated her and she knew it. It was understandable. And she worked with Nas, this newcomer from the NSA who always seemed frustratingly, suspiciously, annoyingly calm. Jane watched the way the team's dynamic had changed – both due to the subtraction of herself and the addition of Nas. They were probably better off that way, of course, but it stung more than she expected it to. Despite Nas' declaration that Jane could trust her, there was something about Nas, something that she couldn't put her finger on, that she didn't like, that she didn't trust.

Then again, she didn't particularly like any of them just then. Hell, she liked herself least of all. So not liking Nas… well, it wasn't that much different than how she felt about anyone else.

 _ **The first time she felt it – that feeling that something was off – she dismissed it as nothing.**_

After what she'd been through with the CIA, paranoia didn't seem irrational, and she could deal with it as long as she kept in mind that it was in her head. Besides, there had been many other times when she had flinched when someone entered the room too quickly, or when someone walked behind her, or in the case of someone who wasn't part of her team, came in her general direction at all… She knew that she was jumpy, that everything set her off, and she had to constantly tell herself to breathe, to relax, not to strike out against the people around her out of pure reflex. Even Kurt, and the daggers he was staring at her.

 _Especially Kurt, the one to whom she'd once been the closest of all._

Eye contact with him alone was difficult, with the way he stomped around glaring at her. Maybe she deserved it. But she'd be lying if she said she didn't have very similar feelings of anger towards him, at least at first. Anger, however, was exhausting, and hers seemed to slowly dissipate as the weeks went on, giving way to other, even less productive feelings. Guilt. Frustration. Self-loathing.

And so, among the stew of emotions bubbling inside her, when she felt the first, faint notion that something was off, she told herself that it was nothing. She had obviously just lost her ability to read situations correctly. To read people correctly. Even him. And why not? She'd lost everything else, after all.

No, she told herself, there was nothing off. While it bothered her that Kurt was bombarding her with hatred, it made sense. She had earned that. She decided that the problem was simply that she hadn't developed a thick enough skin yet to absorb the death glare that he seemed determined to give her all day, every day.

 _I need to work on that,_ she told herself, and let it go with that. She went back to her work and the uncomfortable position of working with a group of people who hated her, ignoring the hostile glares they showered her with whenever they looked her way. Or at least that's what she felt as she tried her best to ignore them.

 _ **...**_

 _ **...Trying to make it work, but man, these times are hard…**_

 **...**

Painstakingly slowly, it started to get better. She and Kurt exchanged a few sentences at a time some days, both trying to make the other understand their frustration but not really knowing how to do that, still as buried in their own feelings as they were. The rest of the team… well, Patterson started to come around, always having been most empathetic to the sorrows of others. Even Reade's glares lessened.

Zapata was the hold out, and Jane wondered if the woman would _ever_ stop looking at her like she wanted to kill her. In truth, Zapata seemed like she would have been just as happy to shoot Jane as she'd been when she'd done it the first day Jane had come back from the CIA and had needed a wound as a cover to pretend she'd escaped from Cade.

Despite all this, it was progress. Perhaps one day, no one on the team would want to shoot her anymore, at least.

 _ **The first time she noticed the look between Weller and Nas, she thought she might be sick.**_

No, Jane wasn't an FBI agent and no, she wasn't necessarily an expert at reading people. But she had always understood Kurt without even trying to – the same way that he had understood her. That tie had seemed to be severed, or so she'd thought… except that somehow, now that she was back, the connection between herself and Kurt seemed to have reestablished itself, all on its own, despite the fact that they barely talked. It was weaker, and it felt different, but it was there.

These days, this was a curse, because the more the hostility cooled between the two of them, the more she suddenly felt that connection slowly grow stronger, despite her best efforts to block it… But still she tried not to feel it, because the more she thought about him, the more painful it was.

She might never have noticed _that_ look if not for the fact that she watched him. Frequently. More frequently than she used to, _before_ , even. At first, she wasn't even conscious that she was doing it, she would simply emerge from her thoughts and find her eyes trained on him.

 _Stop it!_ she would tell herself feverishly. She didn't _want_ this, didn't want him to think that she was pouting over him or something equally stupid and childish. No, she understood precisely why things were the way they were. Once again, she had done this to herself.

She was prepared to handle just about anything, or so she thought. And then there was Nas, who had been the only one to even pretend that she was sympathetic to her when she "returned" (i.e. was forced to come back) to the FBI. _Of course_ Jane didn't trust her. Jane didn't trust _anyone_ , so that wasn't a surprise. Her guard was up, and she watched them all. She watched the team, because she hoped to somehow see some answer in them about how to move forward with all of his, back to the good place where they had all once been, as ridiculous as that might be. And Nas, well, Jane watched her because she was an unknown variable, and Jane didn't like unknown variables.

There was so much more than she didn't know about Nas, so much that she watched the other woman guard behind a cool, calm exterior. That feeling that she'd had about something being "off," maybe it had something to do with Nas, she decided. Was it just that she was _there_ at all, or was there a _reason_ why Nas gave her such an uneasy feeling? She wasn't sure, so she watched her, too, more consciously than she watched the others.

It didn't take Jane long to figure out what was unsettling her.

 _Nas was watching Kurt_.

Now of course, Jane wasn't under any allusions. She didn't own the right to watch him, or any of them for that matter. She understood her own motivations – well, mostly – and not the others', so it was easy to think that _her_ watching people was harmless, while anyone else's was sinister, despite the fact that it could be exactly the same.

Except that it wasn't the same. If she didn't know it at first, she figured it out shortly after she'd noticed Nas watching Kurt… because what happened next was that she realized that Kurt was watching Nas, too.

She now spent a great deal of time watching the two of them, first for different reasons but now in horror as she began to realize what she was actually seeing – though she still hoped that maybe she was wrong – while still going about her usual business. When the two of them were in the same room, it became more complicated, because it was harder to watch both of them as carefully as she wanted to while not being too obvious. The whole thing made her head spin, while also making her pretty much lose her appetite. This, of course, only gave her more time to watch them, because she didn't have to stop to eat.

There was one day in particular when the two of them were standing in the middle Kurt's office, talking. Nothing inappropriate was happening. There were several feet still between them. Nothing alarming or blatantly obvious transpired.

And yet, Jane had been watching from a computer across the bullpen area for long enough, and she knew Kurt well enough, despite what he felt about never having known _her_ at all, that something just clicked inside her head, like someone flipping on a light switch. Suddenly, Rich Dotcom's "Ohhhhh" in the interrogation room flashed through her head, playing in stereo in both of her ears, the volume deafening.

Standing quickly and suddenly struggling to breathe, she was desperate to get away before anyone noticed her obvious distress. "Luckily" for her, at least in this case, since her return to the FBI people generally went out of their way _not_ to see her, and this had become a habit, so consequently no one noticed as she moved unsteadily from the room.

Jane walked down the short space of hallway to the bathroom as fast as she could, feeling her legs begin to buckle under her as she pushed through the door. Thankfully, the room was empty, and she locked herself in a stall where she leaned her head against the thin wall, standing still and simply focusing on remaining upright until her breathing came back to normal and she was convinced that she wasn't actually going to throw up.

Because she knew. She didn't want to know, she had no proof, but she just had a feeling that she couldn't explain. Despite having absolutely no right to say anything about it, no claim over him, no legitimate reason to object other than her wounded pride and a flash of jealousy.

Once she could breathe again, she went back to work. _That's what you get for watching_ , she told herself.

After that, she tried not to watch either of them, tried to keep her eyes down, tried not to know. Because she now knew that there _was_ something worse that Kurt simply hating her, as childish as she felt admitting it to herself. It was jealousy, but it was _more_ than that. When he'd been with Allie, she hadn't felt this way. She hadn't been what she would have called excited, but she had been happy for his happiness… or she could at least lie to herself and say that she had been.

But Nas? There was something very, very wrong here. Despite the fact that she tried not to watch them, she remained concerned. Suspicious, even. And alert, because if she had learned one thing, it was that staying alert meant staying alive.


	2. Get Used To It

**Disclaimer: I do not own Blindspot. More like it's the other way around… I've come to realize that THEY own ME. :) (The … indicate The Script song lyrics, which I also DO NOT own. I'm nowhere near talented enough)**

 _A/N: Thank you everyone for your kind words about chapter one of this story! It's very different from anything I've done before, and I wasn't really sure how I felt about it. I want to be the first to admit that my strength is not writing Blindspot caliber plot lines, so I hope those people wanting to know "where the story is going" won't be too disappointed. I'm keeping the plot part simple and focusing on the characters. I hope you enjoy it!_

…

 _ **She needs me now, but I can't seem to find a time**_

 _ **I've got a new job now in the unemployment line**_

 _ **And I don't know how, how we got into the mess.**_

 _ **Is it God's test?**_

 _ **Someone help us 'cause we're doing our best.**_

 _ **Trying to make it work, but man, these times are hard…**_

…

 _ **The first time she saw him walk onto the elevator at the end of the day without seeking out her eyes, it was like a knife in her heart.**_

Most of the time when Kurt left for the day, Jane was nowhere to be seen. There'd been a time when he'd sought her out before leaving for the day, attempted to time his departure to match hers, or she had done the same for him, so that they very often made it at least as far as the parking garage together. It had been a way to touch base with each other at the end of the day, just another way that they could connect, and while it hadn't happened every single day, in that time _before_ , it had happened often enough that when it didn't, she noticed.

It felt like ages ago since the last time. In reality, it had been since before he'd arrested her, so it might as well have been another lifetime. _A happier lifetime_.

After she came back, of course, it was obviously not going to be that way. He didn't even want to be in the same room with her, and he said so himself, so Jane had developed a new habit. When late afternoon approached, she made herself scarce. While still in the building, she made sure she wasn't in the bullpen area by the elevators. That way, she never had to watch as he left without seeking her out. It was avoidance, and maybe it was cowardly of her, but she simply couldn't bear to have it rubbed in her face day after day.

Of course, she still knew that he left work at the end of every day, but she didn't want to know more than that. With everything she was seeing and sensing, both the way he glared at her, and then whatever was happening between Kurt and Nas, she had decided that the less she knew, the better. Because she didn't know what would be worse – watching him leave at the end of every day without even trying to look for her, or potentially seeing him leave with Nas. Either way, she decided to spare herself the agony. She had more than enough already, after all.

One afternoon, however, she was working at a computer terminal in the vicinity of the elevators, and lost track of the time. She didn't notice that the common area had slowly grown quiet as the agents working there had gradually finished their paperwork and gone home for the night. She was so focused on the task in front of her, she didn't even notice when he walked right by her without so much as a glance in her direction.

For some reason, however, when the elevator dinged to announce its arrival at their floor she _did_ look up, just in time to see Kurt step inside. He was alone – thank goodness – and the floor was eerily quiet. They may have been the last two in the office for all she knew – she worked late more often than not, because the alternative was going back to her empty safe house, which she dreaded even more than she did being around Kurt.

And while yes, she was thankful that at least he hadn't left with Nas, even though she'd been back from that black site for a while now it was the first time she'd had to watch as he left for the day without acknowledging her whatsoever. She sighed heavily, because it felt exactly the way she had expected it to feel. _Horrible._

 _Would you prefer that he glare at you?_ her mind demanded. _Because that's all he would have done as far as acknowledgement if he_ _ **had**_ _looked at you._ That was his default look for her at least half the time lately – and this counted as progress, because it had been _all_ of the time at first – it was still extremely unsettling. She deserved it, however, she knew, having completely adopted the self-loathing that seemed to match the hatred with which almost everyone else in the office regarded her most of the time.

 _No,_ she thought weakly in response, laying her head down against her arm on the desk in front of her and feeling herself shaking. _I would_ _ **prefer**_ _to disappear. Completely. Just to be gone._ A shaky breath escaped her as she struggled not to cry yet again. For someone who could endure physical torture of almost any kind without breaking, she felt incredibly pathetic. She supposed that Sandstorm had had no way to prepare her adequately for this kind of emotional torture.

As much as she told herself that all she wanted was to disappear, she knew even then that she was lying to herself. What she really, _really_ wanted, but would never be able to have, never again in a million years… well, "it" was not an "it." _**He**_ had just walked right by her without a word or a glance and gotten into the elevator.

She dozed off with her head against the desk, too tired and weak and disheartened to bother to lift it as tears leaking from her eyes into the fabric of her sleeve. If only it was possible to want something badly enough that it would simply come to pass. If it could have been, then maybe she could have woken up to find that this nightmare that her life had turned into had ended, and she would have another chance. At all of it.

Somewhere in the early hours of the morning she woke up, her shoulder, arm and neck screaming in pain, her body aching and her heart hurting worst of all. And since wishing for another chance hadn't worked, she pushed herself up by sheer willpower alone, forcing her legs to move her to the elevator, and, after a brief stop in the locker room, found her detail still waiting for her in their usual meeting place, seeming unfazed by the lateness of the hour.

 _This is your life now_ , she told herself. _You might as well get used to it._

 _ **The first time he came in with Nas in the morning, Jane once again bolted for the safety of the bathroom.**_

Again, nothing inappropriate was happening. Hearing the _ding_ of the elevator, Jane looked up from the computer terminal where she was working, an automatic response that was part of her newly sharpened survival instinct. She'd expected Kurt to have been in when she got there that morning, as he normally was, so something already seemed off. Kurt was _always_ the first one in the office in the morning. Usually it didn't matter, since they avoided interacting when it was possible, but for once she was actually waiting for him so that she could run something by him – a theory about the latest tattoo case. She'd been waiting for about an hour now, and his absence confused her. It was a break in the normal routine, and it had her on edge.

It was unlike him _not_ to be in the office at the crack of dawn. They had that in common most days, and even though there was no unnecessary communication between them, even when they were the only two in the office… still, she found his presence at that time of day comforting somehow. After all, that was what the formerly iron clad, all-encompassing bond between them had been reduced to.

Now, they could sit in the same general vicinity of each other, albeit awkwardly, and if they were really lucky, maybe exchange a whole sentence each. But mostly, they just existed in two separate yet joined spaces – him in his office behind the wall of glass, her in the bullpen. They would each hazard the occasional glance at each other, and once a week or so, those glances would coincide. It was almost nothing… but it was what she had left.

She tried not to think about it. After all, it was only one of so many things that she had lost. It seemed to her that her punishment was never ending... and she wondered if at some point, she would ever be able to finish paying for her mistakes, of if this would just go on forever.

And so she continued working, feeling unsettled by his absence that early morning, as she waited for him to show up.

When he did arrive, she once again cursed herself for watching so closely. She really, _really_ needed to stop doing that. What she saw when he stepped out of the elevator was Kurt, deep in conversation with Nas. Carrying matching coffee cups. Arriving for the day… _together_. Gasping audibly against her will, and then immediately thanking whatever force in the universe that was responsible for the fact that there was no one within earshot of her, she was out of her chair in under a second, stumbling over her own feet to get to the relative safety of... she didn't even know. Basically anywhere that was not _that_ room at _that_ moment.

Inside the bathroom, she leaned her back heavily against the only bare wall, slowly sinking to the floor. She had lost the strength to hold herself up any longer. It occurred to her that if anyone else found her there, it would be incredibly awkward, but she couldn't bring herself to move from the spot of the floor. Not yet.

Slowly, her mind stabilized again and she reached a point where she could actually form semi-rational thoughts, the first one being that she had to get up off of the floor and do… _something._ What to do was the next problem. While of course she knew that this form of torture that working at the FBI and doing their bidding as a Sandstorm mole had become was the only alternative to going back to the CIA's "deep, dark hole," as Carter had put it, at that moment she actually considered that it might be worth it. The pain inflicted on her there, where they made no claim to treat her humanely, while horrible, was in a way actually easier to withstand than what was happening to her at the FBI.

Or maybe she was just being dramatic and it only felt that way. It was impossible to be sure.

It was late morning before she let herself lay eyes on Kurt again, when she finally forced herself back into the bullpen. _Why do I do this to myself?_ she wondered. Her mind screamed at her that she shouldn't, but she did it anyway. He sat at his desk, behind the glass wall of his office, deep in concentration on the stack of papers in front of him. The sheer volume of paperwork he went through in a day was, as far as she could tell, never ending.

She couldn't put her finger on why she was watching him yet again. Maybe by this point, she'd decided that she deserved the pain that looking at him seemed to inflict on her. All she knew was… watching him was important. Whatever was going on, something was still… off… and it was _not_ just because she was jealous.

Which was not to say that she _wasn't_ jealous, because okay, yes, she could admit that she was a little jealous. Alright, possibly a lot more than a little.

How did she know that something was off? _His eyes._ She knew his eyes too well, his whole face, really, but his eyes especially, and she knew the look on his face when he felt… whatever it had been that he'd felt about her. She hesitated to assume that it was love, because he hadn't ever said it, but if she'd had to guess… She hadn't known it at the time, but looking back now, she knew that that was what _she_ had felt for him, so while it made her feel slightly presumptuous, she assumed that he had loved her, too. For all the good it did now.

Looking in his eyes these days, though she seldom managed to do it, she saw only one expression no matter who he was looking at. It really never varied notably, just the same haunting emptiness. The look of someone who had lost everything important to them and was now just going through the motions.

 _Is that the look in my eyes, as well?_ she wondered. Try as she might, she couldn't read even that much in her own eyes. To her, they simply looked empty – which was fitting, because that's how she felt.

There was only one exception to Kurt's look of haunting emptiness. Just like in the old days, he had a special look that he gave only to her. Except now that special look was one of thinly veiled contempt – or that was what she swore she saw when he looked at her. Sighing, she pushed the picture of his intense blue eyes out of her mind by force, and got back to work.

 _This is your life now_ , she reminded herself again. _Get used to it._

 _ **The first time she actually saw them exchange a look from across the office, she wanted to bang her head against a wall. Hard.**_

Again, she cursed herself for watching either of them, and both of them, but even so she couldn't stop. It had become a fascination, not just watching everyone in the office, but studying them. Their strengths. Their weaknesses. It was a habit that she had developed at the CIA black site – studying her captors to somehow find a way to escape – and she found that she simply couldn't break it now that she was back. Besides, who knew when something would go wrong and she'd need the information she'd been gathering and cataloging so carefully in her mind?

 _Why in the world would you need_ _ **that**_ _information?_ the voice in her head asked.

 _What if I need to escape?_ she countered.

 _From the FBI?_ she asked herself in surprise. _Why?_

 _Trust no one,_ her thoughts replied. _No one_. _It's the only way to stay safe._

There was doubt nagging at her from inside her head, but she ignored it. _No one?_ she asked herself.

 _No one,_ came her mind's reply. _No exceptions. Look what they did to you, after all._

 _Don't trust them_. Suddenly Marcos' few words to her echoed through her mind from long ago, making her shiver. He hadn't meant the FBI of course, but now… well, it seemed appropriate to apply his words to the world in general. _Don't trust them._ Don't trust **anyone**.

And so she continued to watch. Which was how, the next day, she caught just one more thing that she wished that she had missed. Nas had stopped to talk to Zapata and Reade, across the common area from her, and when the conversation had concluded, just before turning to walk back toward her own office, she had looked casually in Kurt's direction. Jane's eyes followed hers, knowing from the angle exactly where she was looking before her eyes fell on Kurt… and she found him looking directly at Nas, smiling ever so slightly.

It _wasn't_ the look that Kurt had given Jane so many times, thank goodness. No, this one was empty and devoid of the emotion, the connection, the _something_ that had always made whatever it was that _they_ had had so special… however, that didn't change the fact that Kurt's eyes had met Nas' from across the room, or that Jane could tell from looking from one of them to the other what it meant. If it had been Jane instead of Nas that he had been looking at from across the room like that, she would have allowed herself to feel that it meant something. And so, now, it was impossible to convince herself that it _didn't_ , despite how badly she wanted to do just that.

She wasn't entirely sure that she wasn't going to be sick, but this time she couldn't even bring herself to move. Her knees buckled, as she'd just stood up from the chair at her desk and she was thankfully able to catch herself by putting her hands out against the flat surface in front of her, somehow managing to sit back down in the chair that was, luckily, still positioned behind her.

As she sat and tried to breathe, she cursed her legs for giving out, cursed her head for suddenly feeling like it would burst, cursed her lungs for failing to deliver oxygen to the rest of her body in that second, when she felt that she needed it most, cursed the strong urge she felt to bang her head against a wall – in fact cursed herself for caring _at all_ , never mind how much, she even cursed her blood for feeling like it was boiling or her eyes for remaining open, forcing her to watch this scene that seemed to happen in slow motion, just to provide additional torture.

And then, because apparently beating herself up like that wasn't quite enough, she cursed herself again, because _this was her own fault_. If not for her own past actions, _none of it_ would have happened this way.

Her capacity to hate herself seemed to know no bounds.

Feeling eyes on her from across the room, she looked up and glanced around quickly, hoping that no one had witnessed what had probably been glaringly obvious. Sometimes it really just sucked being surrounded by FBI agents – they were too damned perceptive. It only took a few seconds to find the person watching her from across the room. It was Reade. While he didn't smile, the look on his face was sympathetic. He held her gaze for a few seconds, then looked down as the corners of his mouth turned up almost imperceptibly, then he looked back up at her again.

 _Sorry, Jane_ , his eyes seemed to say. Not _I'm sorry for treating you badly,_ more like _I'm sorry you had to see that. It sucks to have to watch._

Obviously, she could have been completely wrong about the look on his face, and even if she wasn't, it was barely anything – not even one word. Still, she was so starved for acknowledgement that was something besides open hostility, that for some reason it made her feel just the tiniest bit better. After all, she'd become unaccustomed to people looking at her with any kindness at all. She bit her lip, looking at him for a few more seconds before she was overcome with emotion and had to look away. Just that small amount of – what was it? Not even kindness, simply the lack of hostility, had been more than she was prepared to handle just then.

 _ **The first time it occurred to her that Nas might be a mole, her first thought was that Kurt could be in danger. Her second thought was that she was going to kick the other woman's ass.**_

In all of her watching, which she still did, despite how much it made her hate herself, she came up with predictable patterns for most people. The members of her team, she noticed, had mostly resumed their familiar routines and habits, the ones that she recognized from… _before_. Patterson seemed to be able to look at and talk to her without hostility, though she seemed hesitant about it, but she was the only one. For the most part, the rest of them now behaved grudgingly as if Jane existed, only doing so when it was necessary. Still, Jane was comforted slightly by the familiarity of the team's routine – even if she was now mostly left outside of it.

Nas, on the other hand, was what would be considered a "new piece." It was what Patterson had called Jane so very long ago. Back then, _Jane_ had been new to the team and struggling with the fact that she wasn't quite one of them, despite wanting desperately to help, but not really allowed to do so – at least not the way she _wanted_ to.

Now Nas was the new piece – granted, a new piece with a very high security clearance, who never had to ask, demand or beg to be taken out in the field, as Jane had. Jane had never quite felt that the other woman fit right with the team – not that anyone ever asked _her_ opinion. She told herself that it wasn't _just_ jealousy over how close Nas and Kurt had become – though she didn't go so far as to rule that out completely.

No, she could recognize that she was hurt by apparently having been replaced, and so easily… and by someone who seemed so… She couldn't put her finger on it. Just… _off_.

 _Apparently he's not choosy anymore_ , she caught herself thinking bitterly, before mentally slapping herself. It didn't matter, after all. Whoever he was with, it wasn't going to be her.

Was it that Nas was _cold_ that bothered her? Because she was _manipulative_? _Secretive_? _All of these, or something else altogether?_ Nas had gone so far as to tell Jane that she was on her side, when Jane had first come back, when it had been crystal clear that no one else had been on her side. So why did Jane feel exactly the opposite was true? Jane had obviously been skeptical then, as she had been of all of them, and she wasn't any less skeptical of the woman now. If anything, she had grown more skeptical. Nas spent too much time sitting in the dark with those damn earbuds in. She was up to _something._

 _Auditory learner, my ass_ , Jane thought. Nas was NSA, and whatever it was that she was doing… There was something going on. Of this Jane had slowly become more and more convinced. _Where was Nas' loyalty?_ Not that Jane should have been one to question anyone's loyalty, of course, especially now that she was working as a Sandstorm double agent. Despite this, she did question the other woman's loyalty. Never mind that the team seemed to want nothing to do with her, she would fight fiercely against anyone who threatened them. It was the only thing she could do to atone for how she had betrayed them.

 _If she put Kurt in danger…_ the thought made her pulse quicken and her eyes narrow unconsciously.

She had no proof, yet… but could Nas be a mole? It wasn't as if that kind of thing _never_ happened…

 _Am I really thinking this?_ she wondered. It seemed so far-fetched. But then again, it really didn't. After all, Jane herself was a mole. There was nothing to say that _any of them_ were really who she thought they were. Other than Nas, the thought that any of the rest of the team might be a mole made her slightly sick. They hated her, didn't trust her, and yet still… she couldn't bear the thought that Nas could do something to harm them, because every member of that team had been like family to her.

 _Nothing is impossible_ , she told herself. _If you've learned anything, you've learned that. Keep paying attention, and keep an eye on her._

Jane's greatest concern, of course, was for Kurt, despite the fact that they were barely on speaking terms. The idea that he would be put in danger, or equally horribly, that he'd once again be in a position to be betrayed… Regardless of the fact that _she_ was the one who had betrayed him the first time, she couldn't bear the thought of him being hurt like that again. She was impressed that he seemed to be coping with everything in his life as well as he was – meaning, basically, that he was functioning well enough to make it into the office each day, because she could see that he was still reeling from everything emotionally – and she didn't imagine that going through another betrayal of that magnitude would help him.

Sighing heavily, regret swelled inside of her. There were a million things that she wished she'd never done, and she couldn't do anything about any of them. As she'd done many times before, she reminded herself again that she'd rather that he was alive and hated her than that he was dead. Of course, alive and hating her was painful, but at least he was alive. That had seemed so simple at the time, before she actually had to live with it.

And yes, she had gotten her wish. And though of course she was grateful that he was alive, still, it was hard to take. To have him look at her and know how he felt about her. No matter that he'd _said_ he didn't hate her. Really, the technical term for his feelings didn't matter. At the end of the day, they could barely look at each other, and that, more than the CIA's worst torture, was what was breaking her.

 _If Nas is a mole,_ Jane thought to herself, _I'm going after her with everything I have._ She didn't even care if she survived or not, as long as Kurt did. After all, he'd been through far more than enough.

 _A/N: I want to be clear that where this story is going is NOT how I think the season will go. Not at all. As I said before, I won't begin to pretend that I can write the twists and turns in the plot that the genius Blindspot writers come up with. And I don't think that Nas in the mole – though I do WANT her to be, so that she can be both punished and then GONE. (Please writers, prove me wrong!)_

 _The whole Nas and Kurt thing is just… ugh, no words for how much I dislike it. It's gross. I also think it's too predictable that she's the mole on the show. I'm afraid that it's going to be one of the team, which will rip our hearts out… but in my version she_ _ **is**_ _the mole – just so that she can be banished from my sight. I know, I know, I'm a little dramatic. :) But I guess we'll find out at least some of the big answers tonight on the mid-season finale…!_


	3. I'm Sorry

**Disclaimer: I do not own Blindspot. More like it's the other way around… I've come to realize that THEY own ME. :) (The … indicate The Script song lyrics, which I also DO NOT own. I'm nowhere near talented enough)**

 _A/N: Ok, so what a mid-season finale! And as I thought, Nas was not the mole… but I'm still glad I made her the mole in my version. There is still something going on with her, and I can't wait to find out what it is… this chapter went far past what I expected, the last section just took over – but I'm not complaining, and I don't think you will either (And no, this is not the last chapter – there is at least one left, if not two). Enjoy!_

…

… _ **But we're gonna start by drinking old cheap bottles of wine**_

 _ **Shit talking up all night**_

 _ **Saying things we haven't for a while, a while yeah**_

 _ **We're smiling but we're close to tears**_

 _ **Even after all these years…**_

…

 _ **The first time Jane had any hard evidence that Nas was the mole, she didn't dare say anything to Kurt.**_

She could imagine his face now, as she stared down at the flash drive that she held loosely in her hand. It was almost as though she was afraid to hold the small object too tightly, for fear that the damning evidence inside would somehow leak out. If she took this to Kurt, he would listen to what she had to say without a word, he would look at her with that stunned look he got when he was – rarely – blindsided by something, he would do the whole stoic thing and hold everything in… just like he always did. And yet she knew better than anyone how inside, his mind would be exploding. He was good at keeping it in, after so many years of practice.

Maybe it was selfish of her, but she couldn't stand to be the one who brought him the evidence that blew his world apart once again, the one who had to tell him that someone _else_ that he was close to, that he trusted, had betrayed him.

 _Nas._ She could honestly say she disliked just about everything about the woman. From her name, to the way she was always annoying calm, to her ability – because of her NSA credentials – to simply make decisions that everyone else had to simply accept… She was infuriating in every way. Jane had studied her carefully, felt like she had analyzed her from every angle, and the more she had watched her, the more she had suspected her.

 _As far as Nas and Kurt…_ that thought alone hurt Jane's head and made her sick. Really, it was amusing that Nas seemed to think they were being discreet, because whatever they were to each other, it seemed glaringly obvious to Jane that they were more than just coworkers.

 _Maybe that's just because you watch Kurt obsessively,_ the voice in her head told her. _And Nas too, now, for that matter._ Other than that one look from Reade a few days before, she had no idea if the others had noticed what was going on between the two of them or not… because, well, they wouldn't have told her if they had.

 _You still wish you could be with him. Admit it,_ the voice in her head taunted her.

 _Shut up!_ she groaned wearily to herself.

Jane was growing more and more tired, both physically and mentally, from both lack of sleep and just a gradually lessening will to continue on this way. She was a fighter, and yet, she couldn't help but feel like she was slowly but surely approaching the limit of how much punishment she could take from her life. Everyone had their limit, after all, even Jane.

As if to add insult to injury, lately she'd started having these dreams in which she and Kurt were living together, blissfully happily, in what seemed like some sort of perfect, happily ever after scenarios. They would have been flawless, except for the fact that they _ended_ , and she woke up gasping for air and even _more_ painfully aware of what could never be. So now, in order to avoid this problem, she was once again avoiding sleep. That seemed to be the only way to ensure that she wouldn't fall back into one of these dreams.

The exhaustion was wearing on her, making her question all of her decisions. Still, as much as she hated what she was about to have to do to Kurt, there was simply no way around it. _No,_ she told herself, _No matter what's going on between them, Nas is a_ _ **mole**_ _. I'm going to expose her. Because if I did nothing and something happened to him…_

No. The thought was simply inconceivable. Besides, after everything she had endured to keep him safe, she sure as hell wasn't going to let something happen to him now. _If she puts Kurt in danger,_ Jane thought, _I'm going to take care of that woman myself._

She stared down at the flash drive in her hand. After studying the files on it in shock, double and triple checking them, there was simply no other explanation. The problem was, she couldn't bear the thought of being the one to bring Kurt that kind of news about someone else that he cared about – not after she had been the first one.

Instead, she had decided to go to Patterson. Patterson would know what to do. Though she got flustered with the best of them, Patterson _always_ found a way to do the impossible. Quickly slipping the tiny piece of metal into her pocket, she headed for Patterson's lab.

 _ **The first time Jane heard Patterson whisper, "Oh my God, Nas is a mole!" Jane breathed a sigh of relief. She'd honestly been afraid that she was imagining the whole thing.**_

Patterson had been tapping away at her keyboard for what felt like a very long time. Jane was sitting on a stool at the counter nearby, trying to be patient, trying not to stare over her friend's shoulder… but it was hard. _So_ hard. Because if the data did what she thought it would do, and if Patterson could prove that Nas was a mole…

Jane took a deep breath and tried to push away the feeling of nausea. If Nas was a mole, what information had she leaked, and to who? Jane's double agent status made things especially dangerous for _her_. Because if Nas gave information to Sandstorm about her… she thought frantically, trying to figure out what Nas might tell them, might have already _told_ them. What did Nas _know_? The problem was, because of her status on the team, Nas knew pretty much _everything…_ probably even more than they thought she did.

As a rule, Jane didn't really trust any of them, and Nas was at the bottom of the list. Kurt, on the other hand, despite her best efforts to the contrary, was at the top of the list. _Kurt… who has no doubt had many conversations with Nas, about me, and who knows what_ _ **about**_ _me. As close as those two have been lately…_

 _I'm going to be sick,_ she thought next. As a rule, she tried not to think about Kurt and Nas together. Ever. It just… well, nothing good would come of it. But now it took on a whole new urgency… What if Kurt had unknowingly told Nas something that Nas could reveal, something that would put Jane, or any other member of the team, in danger…?

"Jane," Patterson's voice broke through her thoughts. "We need to go see Weller." Jane gasped slightly, looking at her friend in surprise. "You were right…" Patterson continued uncertainly. "She's… a mole." Patterson shook her head in disbelief. She'd never cared for Nas, found her unfriendly and cold, but she'd wanted to believe that she just wasn't good with people. This new intel proved otherwise. "We need him in on this as well. We need a plan."

Jane could feel herself shaking her head, though she wasn't conscious of having told her body to do so. Patterson walked up to her, stopping a few feet away and looking at her with a pained expression. She knew that this was more than just work related to Jane, and that she was conflicted.

"Jane," Patterson said softly, reassuringly, "We have evidence. He's going to believe us. He won't want to, but he won't have a choice." She paused and watched her friend's reaction. Jane's face had changed from frightened to skeptical, which was better, all things considered. "Come on," she told Jane. "Just come with me. I'll do the talking."

Jane nodded, staring at her for a second and then whispered, "Thanks, Patterson." Patterson couldn't help but think that Jane looked like she was about to cry, and suddenly she saw the Jane who had first arrived at the FBI so long ago, who'd been so scared and alone. She hated that things had become so awkward among the team since Jane had come back. Things were improving, to be sure, but there was a long way still to go. Even so, without another thought, Patterson took a few steps forward and hugged her.

It took a few seconds, but Jane, who was completely surprised by Patterson's gesture, gently hugged the other woman back. It was an awkward few seconds, and then the two both stepped back self-consciously. They smiled at each other nervously, Jane fighting back tears now even more than ever. She wasn't even accustomed to people _smiling_ at her, and Patterson had suddenly hugged her, out of nowhere. It was more than she had dared to hope for in a very long time.

"Come on," Patterson whispered, smiling at Jane. "We've got a mole to stop."

Taking a deep breath, Jane followed Patterson out of the lab. She wasafraid that Kurt would somehow think that this was all this her fault, that he would hate her even more, even though she knew that logically this was finally something for which she was _not_ responsible. She'd gotten so used to blaming herself, it was hard to conceive of something that _wasn't_ her fault _._

Besides feeling misplaced guilt, Jane was afraid that Kurt would end up scarred by yet _another_ betrayal, this one possibly even worse than her own. Hadn't he been through enough? Then there was always the possibility that somehow, before they were able to contain this situation, it would get worse. That Nas would manage to do something to hurt one of them somehow. Her blood pounded in her ears as these, her biggest fears, boomed through her mind.

 _Nas is here because of me_ , Jane told herself. _She joined the team to find me, to find Sandstorm. If I wasn't here, if I'd never shown up in Times Square, she wouldn't be here either._

 _The team is in danger because of me. Mayfair is dead because of me. And Carter. And Oscar…_

She was on her way down the rabbit hole, falling quickly into her thoughts. Her breathing became irregular as her mind raced faster and faster despite her best attempts to calm down as she walked down the hall slightly behind Patterson. Around the corner from Weller's office, Patterson slowed and turned to face Jane, whose face failed to hide the fact that she was in full on panic mode.

 _It's all my fault_. The words were beating at the inside of her head over and over, mercilessly. _It's all my fault._

"Jane," Patterson said evenly, quietly, since there were now people around them. "You did the right thing. Just let me help you, okay? It's going to be okay."

 _It's going to be okay_. The words echoed in Jane's head, and she remembered when Kurt had said them to her so long ago, back at the beginning of everything. Realizing that Patterson was staring at her and waiting for an answer, she forced herself back to the present, nodding quickly as she squeezed her eyes closed for just a second before opening them again to focus on Patterson, hoping that the fear that she felt wasn't visible on her face.

Patterson smiled encouragingly at her, then whispered, "He's going to be okay. We all are." Jane nodded her head ever so slightly, looking at her for a few more seconds before turning to approach Kurt's door.

 _She knows that you're worried about him. She is, too,_ Jane realized, trying to make herself believe that somehow, Patterson might be right. That it might be okay.

Before she knew it, they were being waved into Kurt's office. Patterson approached his desk cautiously, leaning down toward Kurt and glancing around nervously. "Weller, we need to talk. But… not here," Patterson told him in a whisper.

Jane was glad that it was Patterson who was in charge of this part, the part where Kurt had to find out. It was better that it came from her, someone he had so much respect for, someone that he trusted, than from Jane, who he may or may not have just dismissed as jealous or paranoid. Her eyes fell closed and her head bent down as the other two talked quietly. _Please let him believe her,_ Jane begged silently.

Kurt nodded, looking from Patterson in front of him, back to Jane, who was still standing just inside the door, her head down and the look on her face painfully uncomfortable. From a look at just one of the two, he could tell that something serious was happening, and the combination of the two of them together had him worried. He stood up, closing the file on his desk and securing it in the file cabinet behind him, which he locked, and then nodded toward the door.

"Let's go," he told them seriously.

 _ **The first time she saw Michael Weitz stroll into the office, looking far too pleased with himself, she felt a shiver run down her spine. Okay, it wasn't his first time there, but it was the first time he walked in and asked specifically for Nas.**_

Of course, when Jane and Patterson had gone to Kurt about what they'd found, they'd known that _something_ was going to happen. There was no way to know what or when, so they had to just go about their day to day routines as if nothing was different. That part was agony, but luckily it didn't take long before the _something_ they were waiting for happened.

Reade had directed Weitz to Nas' office, and that was when Jane noticed what looked like a gang of men in suits following behind him. She didn't know what agency they were with, but they looked every bit the part of government agents. Something big was about to happen, and she felt herself holding her breath as the crowd of men disappeared around the corner in the direction of Nas' office.

"What the hell?" she heard Zapata whisper loudly to Reade once the men were out of sight. Reade just shrugged. Jane felt like she was going to be sick as she stood up, walking as calmly as she could manage toward Patterson's lab. She had to tell her…

Collecting Patterson took all of about ten seconds, because as soon as she saw Jane's face in her doorway, she could tell that the something big that they'd been expecting was happening.

"Now?" Patterson asked quickly.

Jane nodded. "It's Weitz," she replied quietly. "He's back, and he brought…" She didn't actually know _who_ Weitz had brought. "…an _army._ "

The two of them rushed through the door and into the hall, slowing down as the approached a gathering crowd in the common area where people gathered around to see what the commotion was about.

"Come on," Patterson told Jane. "We should see this." Jane nodded and stayed behind Patterson until they reached the group, but as the blonde moved forward, craning her neck to see something, Jane suddenly needed to be anywhere else but there. Without a word, she turned and walked quickly back the way they'd come, passing Patterson's lab and finding through the corridors until she found a stairwell. Yes, this out of the way set of stairs would do nicely.

Just a few minutes later, Jane found herself in the only place she could think of that would be deserted just then, with all of the excitement in SIOC – the locker room. As she pushed open the door and walked around the corner towards her locker, she was stopped in surprise at finding that she was _not_ the only one there, after all.

There, on the bench between the rows of lockers, sat Kurt. His shoulders were hunched forward as he leaned his elbows against his knees, his head hanging down. Jane froze in her tracks, unsure of whether to stay or go, to approach him or walk in the opposite direction. What was the right thing to do? It had been so long since she knew how to act around him, and she felt regret for their disastrous past all over again.

Sighing heavily, she decided to take a chance. Because as much as he might still hate her, he looked like he was desperately in need of a friend. She didn't know if _she_ was allowed to be that for him, but she was willing to try.

Slowly, she took a few steps forward, clearing her throat nervously. He hadn't looked up at her, and she hadn't yet decided if she should get any closer to him. And so she stood, waiting for him to do something that would let her know either way.

 _ **The first time Kurt looked at Jane after Nas' betrayal had been reported up the chain, there was something in his eyes that she hadn't seen there in a long time.**_

Patterson, along with everyone else but Jane and Kurt, had watched as Nas was led to the elevator in handcuffs, a crowd of large men in suits forming a tight circle around her. The blonde tech glanced around nervously, afraid that at any second Sandstorm would somehow manage to shut down all of their systems and the Nas would escape. Their building had been compromised before, and she wouldn't have put such a plan past Sandstorm, knowing everything they had done in the past. But no, the group boarded the elevator, the doors closed, and just like that, they were gone.

"We did it," Patterson whispered, turning to look for Jane. "Jane, _you_ did it." That what when she realized that Jane wasn't standing with her anymore. _Oh no,_ she thought _, Where did she go? Did she run?_ Fearing the worst, she began checking the various parts of the floor where the other woman might have gone to be alone. It would be something that Jane would do at such a time.

In the locker room, Jane had stood still for several minutes, watching Kurt. Finally, deciding that by that point he must know that it was her, and taking the fact that he hadn't told her to go away as a good sign, she walked the rest of the way towards him and sat down hesitantly on the bench, several feet away from him. His head was still down, and if she didn't know him better, she would have sworn that he didn't know she was there. But this was Kurt, and Jane just _knew_ that without even having looked in her direction, _he_ knew that it was _her_.

Sighing, she leaned forward so that her position matched his – elbows braced against her knees, shoulders hunched forward, though less so. The only real difference was that her head was turned toward him and she was watching him intently. "I'm sorry, Kurt," she whispered. It was so quiet in the locker room that even those three hushed words sounded far too loud in her ears.

His head began to shake then, and his face contorted slightly, as if he was in pain. "You've done nothing but apologize since you came back here." His voice was barely a whisper, and his eyes remained fixed on the floor. "I didn't want to hear it. I wanted to _punish_ you. I…" He paused, seeming not to be able to find the right words.

"I deserved it," she said immediately. It had become a reflex for her, blaming herself.

" _No_ ," his voice was suddenly louder and more forceful, and he was looking directly at her. "No, you _didn't_."

Stunned, she just stared at him as he looked at her defiantly. It was the first time anyone had suggested that she _didn't_ deserve exactly what had happened to her over the past few months, and she didn't know how to process this information. There was an ache in her chest, similar to the one she'd felt when Patterson had suddenly hugged her. Everyone had been so cold to her since she had returned to the FBI, and she'd accepted it… She'd had to numb herself to her feelings to do so, but that hadn't been a problem after her time with the CIA. This… even the small amount of kindness that those three words represented felt like far more than she deserved.

Jane looked away, down at the floor. "I _am_ sorry about everything, but what I meant was…" Taking a deep breath, she prepared to say the words that felt so bitter on her tongue. "I'm sorry that… Nas… that someone you cared about betrayed you... _Again_."

She felt the last word catch in her throat, and she added even more quietly, "And I'm _still_ sorry that I was the first one." Suddenly the room felt much too small, and there seemed to be far too little oxygen in it. She began pushing herself to her feet quickly to go, and she was surprised when his right hand suddenly gripped her left arm, gently but firmly.

"Jane, wait," he said, quietly but urgently. "Just… wait a second. Don't… _don't go._ "

Her whole body had tensed when he'd stopped her from getting up. After all of the times in her memory that she had been restrained – which was far more in that short period of time than most people experience anything similar in their entire lives – her reaction was understandably automatic. She was ready to strike back at him, to free herself, before her brain was able to compute the facts of the situation.

 _Stop. Think,_ her mind instructed her. _This is Kurt. He isn't going to hurt you._

 _Oh no?_ she demanded, _How can I be sure? He came after me with a_ _ **gun**_ _once. I never thought he'd do_ _ **that**_ _, either._

 _He doesn't have a gun, and he's not holding you_ _ **tightly**_ , her inner voice said slowly, patiently. _He knows very well that you could get out of this grasp if you wanted to, and you know that, too. His grip is just firm enough to stop you from bolting, because, since he knows you, he knows that was what you were about to do. Just stop. Breathe. Listen to whatever it is he wants to say, and then decide if you still want to run. Can't you at least give him that much?_

Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to relax. It was then that she noticed that when he'd reached for her arm, he'd slid towards her on the bench, closing some of the distance between them. Not all of it, but he was definitely closer now. Breathing slowly and deliberately, she waited, focusing only on remaining in that one spot, her eyes now closed. She didn't notice that she was biting her lip until it began to ache from the force of her teeth digging hard into her skin.

She heard him exhale slowly, as if he was getting ready to say something that was hard for him, and then felt him shift beside her. It was then that he realized that his hand was still on her arm, though his grasp had relaxed. He must have just realized that it was there as well, because it was only then that he slowly let go. When she no longer felt the pressure of his hand on her arm, suddenly there was a familiar feeling of falling in the pit of her stomach.

 _No_ , she thought, _not again._ She'd steeled herself against her feelings for him, or tried, though the dreams that she'd been having lately had told her that it was no use. Even so, just that small loss of contact felt like a part of her was being ripped away all over again. She gulped for air suddenly, taking several deep breaths before she felt like the oxygen in her lungs was sufficient again.

"Jane," came his voice from beside her, "you're okay. Just give me a chance to talk, okay? Can you just listen to me for a minute? I know I don't deserve it, but—"

Scoffing suddenly, her eyes flew open in disbelief and she turned to look at him before he could stammer out the rest of his sentence. " _You_ don't deserve to talk to _me?_ You're kidding, right?" Her eyes searched his face in confusion.

"You can't keep putting it all on yourself, Jane," he replied softly, looking steadily into her eyes. There was sadness in his voice, and something in his eyes that she hadn't seen in a long time… compassion. She looked away quickly, pursing her lips, feeling the waves of emotion inside her getting stronger, unsure how long she could hold them back.

 _Dammit,_ she thought. _How does he_ _ **do**_ _that?_

"I'm sorry, Jane," he continued, now that he knew he had her attention, despite the fact that she wasn't looking at him. "I was unfair to you." He paused for a second, and she was about to argue with him – because after all, it _was_ her fault, at least in _her_ mind… all of it – when he began speaking again. The least she could do after everything else she'd done to him was to let him speak, even if nothing he could say was going to convince her that this mess hadn't been her fault.

"I…" he continued in a shaky voice. "I was so _angry_..." She nodded, but still didn't look at him. That much had been pretty clear. "I didn't _want_ to think about how you felt, I could only think about my own pain." Her mouth was open to speak, to tell him again that she had deserved it, but he cut her off before she had a chance. " _No_ , Jane, don't try to tell me that it wasn't wrong, that you deserved it, that it was all your fault. You've been letting everyone tell you that for months now, and you've convinced _yourself_. It _was_ wrong of me, and you _didn't_ deserve it, and it _wasn't_ all your fault. _Period_."

He sounded angry now, though she wasn't quite sure who he was angry with, and she just squeezed her eyes shut, suddenly sitting up rigidly straight at the harsh tone of his voice, nodding quickly but only very slightly. It was then that she suddenly realized that she had steeled herself as if she thought he was going to hit her. _Old habits die hard_ , she thought, _And I guess new ones do, too._ This one was thanks to the CIA.

At almost the same second, it seemed that he'd come to the same conclusion about her demeanor, as her entire body had gone stiff before his eyes. The ache in his chest intensified, and he exhaled slowly to try to ease it, carefully swinging his right leg over the bench so that he was facing her directly, then scooting forward just a little. He was just within arms' reach of her, and he slowly put his hand on her left arm, just barely above her elbow, so lightly that it almost wasn't touching her. Again, for a split second she shook, her body still rigid, though because of the gentleness of his touch this time, the shaking in her arm stopped again almost immediately.

"Jane, I would never—" he started, but she cut him off.

"I know," she replied quickly, nodding her head for emphasis. But she was nodding _too_ hard, she realized too late, obviously overcompensating.

" _Do you?_ " he asked sadly, not believing her.

She exhaled hard, pushing all of the air out of her lungs at that moment, her head dropping against her chest and her shoulders once again hunching forward in a protective stance, holding there. She didn't inhale again quite yet, just held her breath and squeezed her eyes shut tighter still, until she felt tears prick through them.

 _No,_ she thought sadly, _I don't know_ _ **anything**_ _for sure._

She couldn't lie to him. Even if she'd wanted to, her body language would have betrayed her. Besides, she'd lied enough for a lifetime and beyond. "Not anymore," she whispered, so quietly that it took Kurt a second to realize that he'd heard her.

At that moment, he thought that his chest might burst, it hurt so much to hear her say those words. _She_ may have done this to herself, but _he_ had contributed a great deal to help her get to the point where she was now, this broken. It might not have been his fault that all of this had happened, but it was his fault that she now felt so unworthy of forgiveness.

 _What have I done?_ the voice in his head asked, terrified that he'd pushed her so far that she couldn't come back from it. He had only just realized how very much his actions over the past months had affected her, and looking at them objectively now, what he saw horrified him. This was not the person he wanted to be. This was not the person that he had always _been_. This was not the friend that Jane deserved, the one that she had _needed._ This person that he had become… this was not _him_.

His hand dropped from her arm once more, and he pushed himself back away from her in disgust, not with her, but with himself. Jane, of course, wasn't looking at him and couldn't tell the difference, she only knew that he had backed away. She wasn't surprised by this. If anything, quite the opposite. From the first trace of kindness he had shown her a few minutes before, she had been waiting for it all to disappear into thin air. That seemed to be her fate: to glimpse happiness only to have it ripped away from her. It had made her dread people's kindness towards her, knowing that it would hurt that much more when it was gone.

She didn't realize that he was momentarily disgusted with himself and not her until she heard an unfamiliar sound from his direction on the bench beside her. It came from farther away now, and she relaxed slightly, realizing that he was no longer so close to her. While his touch had always calmed her before, after everything she had been through with the CIA and the total bombardment of hostility since she'd been back at the FBI, she realized that she _had_ actually been unconsciously afraid that he was going to hit her. It made her hate herself even more, which she hadn't thought was possible.

 _For far we've fallen,_ she thought sadly, slowly opening her eyes and looking in his direction only very gradually, afraid of what she would see. Would he be angry with her for thinking such a thing about him? After all they'd been through?

 _I just don't know anything anymore_ , she thought sadly, feeling as though her heart was being torn from her body slowly and painfully. _Someone just make this_ _ **stop**_ _._

When her eyes finally reached his face, she was surprised to see tears. Kurt Weller was… _crying_? This was not what she had expected to see.

Immediately, she felt like she had to do something to fix whatever she'd done, but she was at a loss. _I don't know how to fix this!_ her mind wailed in frustration. She looked away from him, then inhaled a slow, shaky breath, willing herself to just inhale and exhale, inhale and exhale. It was the only thing she could think of doing just then, even if it wasn't going to fix anything.

"Jane," he whispered finally. She could hear the pain in his voice, and it was unlike anything she'd ever heard before, not having been there when his father had died, or when he'd found Taylor's remains. She'd seen him only the next day, when his pain had hardened into anger… anger that he had channel into hating _her_. Hearing him in pain made her heart hurt even more than it already did, which she hadn't thought was possible.

" _I'm sorry_ ," he said, and she couldn't help but thing that just then, he sounded just as broken as she felt.

He knew the words were inadequate, but at this point at which they had ended up, what else was there to say? There was simply too much to say, and yet at the same time… nothing.

Breathing slowly and deliberately, she stared at the floor. "Me, too," she replied quietly. Then, smiling sadly, she added, "More than anything."

She didn't see it, but he winced at her last words, knowing that she had chosen them for a reason.

"I should have seen… I should have known that Nas… She was just using me for information," he whispered.

The sadness in his voice was too much, and she choked on the careful breath that she had been focusing on taking. Steadying herself, she pursed her lips, feeling a flood of tears that was about to erupt from inside her but vowing to say what she was going to say first, nonetheless.

"Just like I did." Again, her voice was barely a whisper, and she wouldn't have been surprised if he didn't hear it at all. However, it was all she could manage as her emotions finally overwhelmed her, having been bottled up so tightly for so long. Mere seconds later, heaving sobs escaped her, pushing her forward, so that she doubled over towards her knees, her chest flat against her legs, crying so hard that she could barely breathe. Crying for everything she had lost this time around – mainly, _him_.

 _I didn't just do this to myself,_ she thought wearily, hating herself more than ever before. _I did this to_ _ **him**_ _, too. I don't deserve to be here at all. I_ _ **deserve**_ _to be with the CIA._ These thoughts only made her cry harder, and struggle more desperately to breathe.

He couldn't watch her do this to herself. He'd never been able to see her upset, and seeing her cry was like his kryptonite. But this… this was a thousand times worse than he'd ever seen her before, and no matter how awkward it had been between them for so long now, this time he was going to act like the person – the friend – that he'd forgotten to be to her for so long now. Without stopping to think, he pushed himself forward slowly but steadily along the bench until he was right beside her, his knees brushing against her legs.

"Jane," he said, laying his right hand carefully on the middle of her back, conscious of the fact that she'd been tortured by the CIA and that she probably still had scars hidden beneath her layers of clothing that he didn't want to irritate. The depth of her despair was made painfully obvious when she didn't flinch at all, just went on heaving out sobs as if he was nowhere near her, her instincts of self-preservation now completely shut down. His hand moved back and forth gently across her back, trying to calm her the way he'd done in the past, with contact between the two of them. He hoped fleetingly just then that no one else came into the locker room for the next little while, and he wondered if they'd manage to get that lucky.

She'd brought her hands up behind her head, linking her fingers across the back of her neck and covering her head with her arms, as if to protect herself. He continued to rub her back, thinking that it didn't seem to be having the desired effect – or at least, not fast enough for the desperation he felt to make her stop crying – and after another minute he decided that he needed to try something else. All he knew was that he desperately needed to get through to her.

After all these months of shutting her out, he couldn't let her go another second thinking that he didn't care. That couldn't be farther from the truth. He _did_ care, far more than he'd been willing to admit. He'd ended up with Nas simply out of a need to fill a void that was left by the thought that Jane was gone forever from his life, not understanding that if she was, it was because he had banished her.

Kurt stood up and stepped over the bench, moving in front of her and kneeling down on the floor. He hesitated only a second before reaching both his hands up to gently lay them on her arms, which were secured tightly against the outsides of her knees, bent sharply at the elbows as her fingers were still woven tightly behind her neck. He moved his hands slowly up to her shoulders, then slowly back down to her elbows, repeating the back and forth motion, hoping against hope that this would still work.

After so much time, so many things that were broken between them, he hoped that his ability to calm her this way wasn't one of the things that he had lost. He was conscious of tears on his cheeks for the first time in quite a while, and he felt panic building inside him.

 _Please don't let it be too late,_ he thought frantically. _Please tell me we can fix this._ His forehead leaned forward until it rested against the top of her head, which was facing him, and was the only part of her head _not_ covered by the arms she had wrapped around her head. Again without giving it a second thought, his hands released her arms and his own arms wrapped around her, reaching across her back carefully once again, and holding on tightly.

 _How did I possibly think that this one person, that_ _ **Jane**_ _of all people, could be to blame for so much evil?_ He wondered, feeling tears continue to travel down his face but not caring enough about them to stop holding onto her. He promised himself then that he was going to make it up to her… somehow.

Patterson, meanwhile, had looked everywhere for Jane. It had been at least half an hour, if not more, since she'd been by her side, and Patterson was getting worried. She thought of going to Weller about it, though that was a little bit awkward, seeing how things were between them… but she had to do _something_ besides walk in circles looking for her herself. Weller, however, was also nowhere to be found, and Patterson suddenly started to wonder. Was that a coincidence?

She sat back down at her computer and pulled up video feeds from the various cameras around the office, peering at each of them carefully, scrolling back slightly in time. It didn't take long to find Jane, and to trace her to the locker room. She watched Jane come across Weller there, and she didn't need audio to know what had happened. Knowing that she should turn the feed off now that she'd found out that both of them were safe and accounted for, she was about to do just that when she watched Jane's face crumble, as her friend broke down before her eyes.

Patterson, being the most sensitive one in the group, couldn't look away until she knew that her friend was okay, and she felt tears gathering in her own eyes before she even realized it. And then suddenly Kurt was on the ground in front of Jane, and put his arms around her. The tears fell freely down Patterson's cheeks now, because whatever had happened between the two of them, some kind of miracle had just happened before her eyes.

Maybe they were going to be okay, after all.


	4. Us

**Disclaimer: I do not own Blindspot. More like it's the other way around… I've come to realize that THEY own ME. :) (The … indicate The Script song lyrics, which I also DO NOT own. I'm nowhere near talented enough)**

 _A/N: Thanks everyone for the_ _ **very**_ _kind reviews. They always make me smile. There's one more chapter after this… Enjoy!_

…

 _ **We just now got the feeling that we're meeting**_

 _ **For the first time.**_

…

 _ **The first time he showed up at her safe house (well, the first time since the night he arrested her, anyway) a few nights after she had broken down in the locker room, she didn't answer the door.**_

Of course, he had a key, and yes, he could have let himself in. Still, he'd always felt strange about that, more and more so as they'd grown closer, once upon a time... _Not_ that he was sure whether what they were was 'close' now, but… well, in a way, they were _closer_ now. After all, she'd just saved him from an extremely dangerous situation that he hadn't even known that he was in. If nothing else, he was now in her debt, and if she wanted space, then fine. He'd give her space. _For now_.

 _For now_ last two hours, at which point he showed up at her door again, now closer to 10:30 pm, and she still didn't answer her door. Her detail was outside, and they claimed that she hadn't left. Of course, Kurt knew her well enough to know that this may or may not be true. If she wanted to leave unaccompanied, she would just go out the back. Ringing the doorbell once again, and hearing nothing, he reached reluctantly into his pocket for his key ring.

He kept the key to her safe house on the same keychain as the key for his apartment. That way he was guaranteed not to lose it, and he would always to have it when he needed it. Had he ever done that for an asset before? Of course not. But she wasn't just as FBI asset to him, after all, as Zapata had pointed out so long ago.

 _Dammit, Jane_ , he thought this time, pushing the door open and looking around to reveal a place that looked completely unlived in. Before she'd been arrested, she'd made her plain safe house her own, adding small personal touches. Drawings, small trinkets… little things that she'd acquired slowly, over time.

 _All of the things that were taken away from her when you arrested her,_ the voice in his head pointed out helpfully. Guilt reared its head in him once again, though he reminded himself for the thousandth time that that wouldn't help. He just had to do his best to move on, to make it up to her somehow.

Yes, the bleakness of her safe house was what now struck him immediately. It was the first time he'd been there, somehow, despite the fact that she'd been back for… How long _had_ it been? He couldn't quite remember.

 _That means it's been long enough that you should have checked in on her by now,_ he told himself.

Again, he felt guilty. In the time _before,_ he'd been to her safe houses – both of them – immediately after she'd moved in, and periodically after that. But this time around… this was the first time he'd bothered to come by.

He couldn't help but think that it said something very telling about her current state of mind that in the time that she'd been back, she hadn't accumulated _anything_. If he didn't know better, and if not for her detail outside – which had been reinstated at his insistence when she'd come back – he would have thought for sure that she'd never lived here at all.

"Jane," he called as he walked slowly across the creaking floor. "Hello? You didn't answer, so…" He felt like an intruder there, and in a way he supposed that he was. But… in this situation, this was his duty. Still, once again he immediately felt guilty.

 _You can't let her have anything, can you?_ he asked himself accusingly. _Not even the right to be alone._ But no, he needed to talk to her, and this was important. But besides that, something was… off. Where was she?

The stairs creaked under him as he ventured upstairs, his hand now on his holster, though his gun remained inside. It was simply _too quiet._ He looked cautiously into each room as he approached her bedroom door, which was ajar, and he knocked lightly with his knuckles. The small amount of force of his knock pushed the door the rest of the way open, and he peered inside.

"Jane?" he called as the door swung inward. The first thing he noticed was that the bed was neatly made, and for a second he thought that she had snuck out.

As he scanned the room, however, he saw here there, huddled in a ball in the corner, sitting on the floor against the far wall. She sat directly in patch of moonlight that fell on the floor from the window across the room, and he wondered if she'd chosen that spot for that reason. Despite his calling her name, she remained still, hugging her knees tightly to her and as far as he could tell, staring at nothing.

For a second he just stood there looking at her, stunned. Then, without a word, he walked over and sat down against the wall beside her, his left shoulder almost – but not quite – touching her right shoulder, glancing at her and waiting to see what she would do. Her breathing was shallow and her eyes darted around the room, everywhere but at him, though he could tell that she was conscious of him beside her. After a few minutes it became clear that she wasn't going to initiate a conversation, so he did.

"Couldn't sleep?" he asked quietly, looking at her sympathetically.

She'd noticed that ever since the day that Nas was arrested, when she'd found him in the locker room, he looked at her the way he had before everything had gone to Hell… like the Jane she had been back at the beginning. She wasn't sure she deserved the kindness that was once again reflected in his eyes – not after everything she'd done – but she would be lying if she said she didn't like it. Being around him was once again soothing to her, even if she was now a very different, and _she_ would argue lesser, version of her former self.

Where she would once have sought out his company, she no longer did. Not because she didn't want it, but because she felt unworthy of it. She'd gotten used to not asking anyone for anything, not even expecting the simplest forms of kindness from people around her. He knew this, and he knew that it would take time for her to be comfortable with the idea that someone cared about her again, but that was something that he was willing to work on relentlessly.

At one point, _before_ , maybe she would have called him if she'd been feeling as desperate she was obviously feeling just then. _Maybe_. She'd always been stubborn, so even that wasn't a certainty. It was so hard to watch her do this to herself, to sit there and watch her look so… _empty_

Jane shrugged in response to his question, still not meeting his eyes. It was amazing how all of a sudden, he could read her again. "Did you _try_?" he asked knowingly, pretty sure that he'd figured out the problem already. She shook her head, still not looking at him.

 _Dammit Weller_ , she thought. Apparently now that things seemed to be better between them, he was back to knowing what she was thinking most of the time. It was frustrating and yet… she couldn't deny that she didn't hate the feeling that someone cared enough to try to read her mind. She liked it _too much_ , actually, and as much as it felt good, it was also terrifying. After all, she knew what it was like to have that and then _lose_ it.

"Have you been having nightmares again?" he asked quietly.

She paused, considering what she wanted to say. "They started when I… _came back_ ," she said hesitantly. "And then they had _mostly_ stopped..." She rested her chin against the back of her right hand, which was balanced on her right knee. Glancing at him for just long enough for her eyes to land on his, she looked away immediately, before she spoke again – but not before she saw the concern in his eyes. It was the reason that she'd been afraid to look at him. It was going to be a long time before she let herself trust this, the way he now treated her so completely differently than before. With so much kindness.

"And now?" he asked, sensing that there was more.

A sad smile came over her face. "Now, they're… _different_. I guess they're… _happy nightmares_." He tilted his head and looked at her with interest, as if he'd be able to figure out what she meant if only he focused on her hard enough.

"Happy nightmares?" he asked, keeping his tone soft. Everything he said or did in regards to Jane now was the polar opposite of the way he had acted towards her for the past few months – he made sure of it. Now that he was conscious of his effect on her, he made sure that he didn't do anything that might make her panic. On the contrary, he did everything he could to sooth her. This wasn't lost on her, but she still wasn't quite ready to let down her guard.

"They started… I don't know. A month ago?" she said, looking at the ceiling while she considered how long it had been. She'd avoided sleeping for so long, in a way it all felt like one long day.

 _So, they started while everything was still so horribly messed up,_ he thought. _Before Jane had discovered that Nas was a mole… And while he'd still been_ _ **with**_ _Nas…_ He shuddered slightly, thinking back to what her state of mind must have been like back at that time. She'd been completely alone, every night, in this house that was barely more than a collection of four walls, it was so empty. His eyes focused on his knees for a few seconds as the guilt washed over him yet again, despite the fact that he knew it wouldn't help.

And yet, she called these "happy nightmares." He wanted to understand what she meant by this, so that he would know how to help her… because clearly, if they were keeping her up all night, they were still a problem. He just nodded and waited for her to continue.

"I guess technically they're not nightmares," she continued. "In these dreams, I'm… happy. I have a regular, happy life… The kind I've never had."

She stared across the room as she pictured the recurring dream of herself and Kurt, blissfully happy, and just the thought was enough to make her eyes water slightly. She decided that she needed to keep talking, to finish explaining so they could move on to another topic, and also because she hoped that that would distract him from the fact that her eyes were now glassy. However, suddenly she couldn't seem to get anything by him anymore, where he not so long ago wouldn't even have looked at her more than once every few days if he didn't have to. She still wasn't used to _that_.

"And then I wake up… here… with nothing." Her words came out in a faint whisper, and despite how hard she was trying not to cry, she knew that she was about to lose the battle. She leaned her head down against her knees so that he couldn't see her face, even though she knew that it would be obvious to him from her uneven breathing and her shaking shoulders that she was crying, even if she managed to do it quietly.

It had surprised her when the words had tumbled out, because she hadn't actually intended to tell him about her dreams. Despite this, somehow, no matter how badly she didn't want to open up to anyone, she was slowly starting to feel comfortable talking to him again – even though it terrified her. After all, it meant trusting him again.

Sitting beside her while she cried, Kurt was once again at a loss. She had herself curled up so tightly, and he had trouble deciding if he should try to find a place to hold onto her. Just then, however, it seemed that if _anyone_ had ever needed someone holding onto them, it was Jane at that moment.

Reaching around slowly to where her right hand clutched her left leg tightly, he let his right hand rest gently against her skin, running his thumb over the honeycomb pattern over the back of her hand for a minute before laying his hand lightly over hers. Slowly, her breathing came back to normal and her grip on her left leg loosened until he could remove her hand from it completely.

Lowering his knees so that he was now sitting with his legs out straight in front of him, he held her hand gently between both of his in his lap, turning it over and tracing the dark pattern of the ink, and then turning it over again and tracing his fingers on her bare palm. Before she knew it, her tears had stopped and her breathing was once again normal, and she felt relaxed enough to stretch her legs out in front of her, just as he had done.

They sat in silence like that for a while before Kurt finally spoke again. "So what's in these happy dreams that you miss so much when you wake up?" he asked her, continuing to trace his fingers across her hand. He was trying not to ask anything that would push her too hard, but he hoped that she would tell him.

Staring ahead of her, she wondered how she should answer, or if she should answer at all. He wouldn't hold it against her if she didn't, she knew. At this point she at least knew that if she didn't want to talk about it, he wouldn't mention it again until she was ready. And yet, there was something about telling him what the dreams were that so far, even though it had made her cry, had also made her feel better. The _thought_ of trusting him again terrified her, but the act of actually _doing_ it, of confiding in him, felt good. How did that even make sense?

 _So don't overthink it,_ she told herself, _Just do it._

And so she thought to herself, _Well, what the hell do I have to lose?_ After all, the chances that the answer to his question would be something he didn't want to hear seemed slim to none at that moment. Taking a deep breath, she looked up at him and replied simply, "Us."

Jane could tell that he was surprised, and she felt her cheeks heat up slightly as she looked away from him again. Watching her for a second, Kurt then took her hand between both of his, clasping them around hers more tightly, shaking his head as he looked down at their now interlocked hands. Just then he didn't know what to say.

 _She was having these dreams while I was treating her like dirt,_ he thought, stunned. _But why?_

 _Because_ , came the reply in his head, as if it should have been obvious, _she was hanging on to how good the two of you had been before. She was going through Hell, and she just wanted that back._

Several agonizing minutes went by, during which she wondered if she shouldn't have said anything after all, but all she could do was sit and wait. Finally, her patience was rewarded. "Jane," he said, still overcome with disbelief, "I'm sorry."

"Me, too," she whispered. She wondered if they would ever be able to move past this stage where they both felt such intense guilt. Only time would tell, she supposed, but she hoped that they could.

The fact that she hadn't been sleeping because she'd been having happy dreams of _the two of them_ from which she didn't want to wake up, even back when he was still treating her so horribly… that part confounded him. Regret nibbled at the corners of his mind, but once again there was nothing about the past that could be changed, and besides… he was there now. Wasn't that the most important thing?

"I'm actually pretty sure this might be one of those dreams," she whispered, suddenly wondering if she looked as tired as she felt. The not sleeping over the past month was quickly catching up with her, and she was now so darn relaxed with him sitting there… Without warning, she yawned long and loud, laughing as she struggled to cover her mouth with her free hand.

"You need to sleep," he told her, which only earned him a hardened look. Convincing her of this was not going to be easy, so he changed his technique. "Okay, I promise not to tell you again that you need to sleep," he said seriously. "But can we possibly go downstairs and sit somewhere more comfortable? There's a couch down there that I bet you've never even sat on." The bed was closer, of course, but he didn't want her to mistake his intentions for anything but the most innocent.

She made a face at him, and he knew that he was right. She _did_ need to sleep, she just didn't _want_ to sleep – and understandably so. Smiling at her, he kept his left hand intertwined with her right, freeing his right hand to help him stand up from the floor. He didn't regret having sat there with her, but he was definitely a little sore now. With their already joined hands, he pulled her up to her feet and tugged her toward the doorway. At the top of the stairs, he motioned for her to go first, dropping her hand reluctantly and then following closely behind her.

In the living room, Kurt turned on the TV, leaving it on the first mindless looking comedy that he found. Jane walked over and sat down on the couch, yawning again before she had a chance to get comfortable. He took a few steps to follow her when something suddenly occurred to him. Looking at her accusingly, he said, "I suppose next you're going to tell me you haven't been eating, either?"

What could she say? She wasn't going to lie… Shaking her head sheepishly, she bit her lip and looked up at him from under her eyelashes. He just shook his head at her in disbelief.

 _How is she so stubborn?_ he wondered. _And how can she fail to even do the very basics for herself?_

 _She's traumatized_ , he reminded himself. _She has needed you for a lot longer than you let yourself realize._

Clearly he was going to have to spend more time with her, because she really wasn't taking care of herself… But somehow, the idea of spending more time with Jane wasn't a thought that he minded at all.

"You're going to have to start eating, you know," he called as he turned and walked to the kitchen to see what, if anything, she had as far as food went. He wasn't especially optimistic… based on what he'd seen since he arrived.

"You're so bossy!" she called after him with a smile. He turned around and walked right back towards her. He had to see for himself what he'd thought he'd just heard. Yes! As he stopped in front of her, he saw that he had been correct… She was smiling, now half laying down on the couch, her eyes already heavy.

"Apparently you need someone to help you with these basic things, like eating and sleeping," he said, crossing his arms as he grinned at her. Amazingly, she was still smiling at him, and he couldn't help but feel a huge sense of relief. That spark in her was still alive, it had just been buried deep inside.

"Are you volunteering?" she asked, sitting up slightly, looking mildly interested.

"Whatever you need," he said, smiling at her intently, his tone suddenly serious. He wondered if she knew just how much he meant it. After a few seconds, she looked away self-consciously, but continued to smile. With that, he walked back to the kitchen to look for something that he could convince her to eat.

 _Whatever you need,_ he repeated to himself with a smile. He looked back across the room at her then, and saw that in the time it had taken him to walk across the room, Jane had fallen asleep. Still, he continued on to the kitchen. Eventually she would wake up, and she'd need something to convince her to eat then. Whenever that was.

Though he felt like it _should_ have felt strange, he was oddly comforted by the fact that he didn't know how long he would need to stick around her place, only that he wouldn't go home until he made sure that she was okay.

Not more than fifteen minutes later, he had found and cooked some noodles, mixed in some packets of sauce that were left in her refrigerator from what must have been Chinese take-out, and called it a success. That was literally the best he could do with what he had to work with, but it was something. He would stock the kitchen better tomorrow. For some reason, that thought made him smile.

Leaving the noodles in the pot on the stove, with the lid on to keep them warm for a while, he walked back to the couch, where she was now fast asleep. She'd fallen asleep with her feet tucked up beside her by the far end of the couch, leaning toward the middle but hugging and leaning on two large throw pillows, so that she was only really taking up half of the couch. Kurt sat down on the other side of the two throw pillows, resting his right elbow against the one free spot on the one closest to him as he sat and watched her, tuning out the TV completely.

An hour later, he woke with a start, realizing that he had dozed off. He must have leaned his head against his hand, and the elbow that rested on the back corner of the pillow that Jane was hugging must have slipped out from under him. Or at least, that seemed like what was likely to have happened. He stretched, sitting up and reaching for the remote control of the TV, turning it off so that the room was suddenly quiet. In the distance there was a siren, but no other noise. He looked at the clock, and saw that it was after midnight. Not that it mattered. He was just happy to see that Jane was still asleep.

As if on cue, she stirred, groaning loudly and letting go of the pillows that she'd been halfway sleeping on top of, pushing herself up groggily and appearing to try to get her bearings as she gasped for breath. He scooted himself toward her, steadily but not quickly enough to startle her – he hoped – wanting to reassure her before she descended into panic or despair or wherever the dreams that she'd talked about usually left her.

She pushed the pillows away from her onto the floor with a ferocity that suggested that she held them personally responsible for whatever was happening in her head just then, so there was no longer anything between them. She was still only semi-conscious, and he wasn't sure that she'd yet realized that he was actually there.

"Hey, Jane, are you okay?" he asked quietly. She was right in front of him, but it was only when he spoke that she seemed to focus on him. He pushed a strand of hair out of her face hesitantly, tucking it behind her ear, and then dropped his hand to her shoulder. Sleepy but slightly more awake, she looked at him in surprise and said nothing as her expression began to change. It looked like a mixture of anxiety and confusion, though there could have been a few others in there that he couldn't identify, and to top it off, he couldn't help but notice that she was shaking slightly.

"Did you have another one of those dreams?" he asked quietly, to which she just nodded, exhaling heavily and seeming unable to quite catch her breath, leaning her head down towards his arm, then allowing him to gently pull her towards him until her forehead rested on his collarbone. He wound both of his arms gently around her back.

She barely made a sound, but her body shook harder and harder as she leaned against him, which concerned him even more than it would have if she'd been wailing. It suggested so much more heartbreak that if she had simply been crying, and like it or not, he had played a part in this. Now, he intended to fix it.

Remembering a trick that Sarah had once used on Sawyer as a baby, and deciding on a slightly gentler variation, he leaned his face beside her ear, and simply said, "Jane… ssssshhhhhhh, it's okay." He paused and then repeated it, many times, until she stopped shaking and grew still. He was beginning to think that she had fallen asleep, when she finally tilted her head slightly to lean her temple against his collarbone, the spot on his shirt now wet from her tears, angling her face slightly upward to look at him shyly.

She was embarrassed, but mostly she was just exhausted, and she'd be lying if she said that she wasn't relieved that he was there. Despite the fact that she'd just cried her heart out, she somehow felt better for it. While she wanted to apologize, just then she couldn't bring herself to say anything, she simply stared at him out of the corners of her tired, bloodshot eyes.

"Better?" he asked simply, to which she nodded slowly. She did feel a little better, all things considered, but she had no intention of going back to sleep, that was for sure. "Good," he said, smiling and then immediately yawning. "I fell asleep for a little while myself." Then, remembering the noodles he'd made, he asked, "Are you hungry?"

When she shook her head immediately, making a face, he just nodded. "Okay, then, we're going back to sleep." She tensed immediately, not knowing what he meant by _we_ and immediately tense at the mention of sleep. It had become almost as much her enemy as Sandstorm lately. Watching her wince at the mention of sleep, he shook his head sadly.

To her disappointment, he released his arms from around her and scooted down to the other end of the couch, where he picked up one of the large pillows from the floor and put it against the arm of the couch, then turned to lean his back against it, smiling at her mischievously. The couch was wide, and he moved to the edge, leaving a generous sized space between himself the cushion on the back of the couch. Looking at her expectantly, he patted the space beside him, but not saying anything else about it.

"Could you hand me that blanket from the other end?" he asked, yawning once again as she reached for it. She slowly moved to hand it to him, but she remained sitting just past where his feet rested on the couch, his legs unfolded straight in front of him. After she handed him the blanket, she sat back and just looked at him from where she sat.

"Jane, if you'd rather stay there, that's fine. Wherever's most comfortable. Okay?" he said quietly. The thing was, she knew that he meant it, too. She sat and considered her options. Sit where you are, move to the end the lay down with Kurt, or… don't sleep? It didn't seem to her like there should have even been a question about which of those was the best choice – and yet, she sat there, frozen, wishing that her brain didn't have to work so hard to sabotage her at every turn.

"Jane," his voice broke into her thoughts. "Do you want me to go?" There was no accusatory tone, no tone of any kind, just an honest question, and she knew that if that was what she really wanted, then he would go – assuming, of course, that he thought she'd be okay by herself… which she wasn't convinced that he would believe anyway, at this point.

However, if there was one thing she _didn't_ want, it was for him to go. Shaking her head, she looked up at him to see the concern in his eyes. "I just want you to get some sleep. You desperately need it." She knew that he was right, and yet… "If you want me to stick around, then I will. Easy. Okay? I just want you to sleep."

 _How did he manage to make it all seem so simple?_ she wondered. Nothing in her entire memory had ever been simple, but when he said it like that…

"You know that you can be superwoman again tomorrow, right?" he added with a smile. He wanted to reach for her hand, but the situation was just so complicated, and at that moment he didn't know the right thing to do. He needed to let her think first. "But for now, you can be off-duty for the night, okay? Just call it a nap, if that makes you feel better."

His superwoman comment had made her smile for a second, despite the weight she felt sitting heavily inside her chest. _Why did everything have to crush her like this?_ She didn't know, she only wished she could make it stop. For a few seconds she forced herself to focus on him, sitting a few feet away from her and looking at her with the most sincere concern with which anyone in her entire memory had ever looked at her.

It reminded her of… someone. She chuckled to herself when she realized that it was _him_ , from _before_. Kurt reminded her of himself, the way things had felt in the beginning. When everything was simple – even though it had seemed anything but – and all she had known, for absolutely no logical reason except that she just _knew_ , was that she could trust him. It had been there in his eyes… and now it was once again.

Her smile returned then, slowly. "Are you sure there's enough room over there?" she asked quietly, watching for his reaction. He looked at her so happily that, while the entire thing made her nervous, once again she just knew that trusting him – at least enough to lean against his shoulder and let him try to keep her bad dreams away – was the right decision.

He stretched his right arm out over the back of the couch, and she scooted herself into the small space that he'd made for her, noticing that in order for her to fit, she had to lie sort of overlapped his the right side of his body, and when she leaned her head to her left, it happened to land perfectly positioned so that he could, in turn, turn his head and lean his cheek against her hair. His right hand curled around her right arm just below her shoulder, his arm behind her. After a few seconds of settling in, she was surprised to notice that she felt calmer now than she had when she'd been _thinking about_ snuggling up with him like this – once again, when she'd finally stopped overthinking, she'd discovered that it was actually fine. Better than fine.

"You okay?" he asked. She couldn't help but notice that now that they were so close together, he spoke more quietly. Glancing at him and smiling, she nodded. "Yeah," she replied simply. She couldn't quite put the wonder that she felt into words. He took the beige blanket that he'd held on his lap for the past few minutes, and spread it as best he could over the two of them. Since she still had both of her hands free, she reached forward and helped him, until it covered both of them. When she laid back down, somehow the little space they'd created on the couch seemed even cozier.

"This _isn't_ the dream, right?" she said, suddenly not completely convinced.

"Nope," he whispered, turning toward her ever so slightly, still not quite believing that he'd gotten her to lie down with him, and hoping that she'd actually sleep the rest of the night.

"Then I guess maybe there's nothing to be sad about when I wake up," she said, glad that her face was at an angle that he couldn't quite see just then, because she felt her cheeks flushing again.

He chuckled, then whispered, "Nope, there isn't. Now go to sleep, Superwoman."

She slept the rest of the night without dreaming at all. After all, she didn't need to hold onto those dreams anymore.

 _ **The first time he suggested that they get a drink after work – well, no, it wasn't the first time he'd ever**_ _ **suggested**_ _ **it, just the first time they'd actually done it. After all, he'd owed her two by then, possibly more.**_

"Are we still on for drinks tonight?" he asked her mid-way through the morning. They were in the car on the way back from a warehouse in Brooklyn where they'd been called to a scene, only to turn around and hand the case over to local police. It hadn't been what they'd thought it was.

"Oh, uh, yeah, of course," she replied uncertainly, as her eyes darted around the road ahead of them. She'd felt like she was forgetting _something_ , and apparently this was it.

Looked over at her and grinning in amusement, he chuckled. "You forgot, didn't you?" he asked.

"No, I just… I… Yes. I forgot," she finally admitted. "I mean, I guess I figured that we've never been very successful at going out for drinks, so I guess I didn't remember what day we'd said, because…"

"You assumed that it wasn't going to happen?" he finished her sentence for her, pretending to be offended.

" _Not_ because I didn't want to, our luck just tends to…" she trailed off, feeling badly for not having taken him seriously.

"To _suck_?" he finished for her, nodding in agreement.Watching her blush, he nodded at her thoughtfully. "Yes, it does. Makes sense, I suppose. But tonight is different."

"Oh?" she asked, raising her eyebrows curiously. "Why is that?"

"Because tonight, we're _going,_ " he said simply, as if it was obvious. Nodding at him, she chuckled slightly. "I owe you at least two drinks, and probably more, considering that you've saved my life _a few_ times…"

"Well, you've saved mine too, I think we're even on those…" she protested, watching him shake his head at her. Rolling her eyes, she gave up on that line of reasoning. "Okay, well I guess we'll see," she replied, shaking her head at his optimism. "The last time we said we were going out for drinks, it took about five seconds before…" Her words trailed off and she was suddenly lost in thought.

The last time they'd been about to go out for drinks, Weitz had burst into the office and arrested Mayfair.

 _Mayfair_.

She felt a twinge in her chest as she thought of their former boss. _It wasn't my fault_ , she told herself silently. Kurt had made her repeat those words over and over to herself until they echoed in her head over the past few weeks. Any time she started down a path that let to her beating herself up – which she now realized happened with alarming frequency, and he _always_ seemed to know when it was happening – he made her stop and repeat those four words, sometimes thirty or forty times if that was what it took. After a while, something amazing happened – she started to almost believe them. At the very least, she was more aware of her negative thoughts and how frequently she had them.

Kurt cleared his throat loudly, and she looked over at him, knowing the look that would greet when she did. She rolled her eyes at him again, and then, because she knew that it was an argument that she wouldn't win – having tried many times already – she sighed and said "It wasn't my fault."

"That's right," he said with a satisfied smile. "It wasn't. I'm glad we agree." She stuck out her tongue at him, and they rounded the corner, pulling into the FBI parking garage. Within minutes they were back inside, meeting with the team about what each of them had found out in the few hours since they'd split off.

As they stood in the screens room, briefing each other, Jane couldn't help but realize that the dynamic within the team was finally starting to feel more like it once had. More like they were, well, a _team_. Maybe not the same as they'd been before, but slowly, they were going in that direction. At least things weren't as bad as they had been. Most notably, Zapata and Reade no longer glared at Jane, but instead managed to look at her with skepticism, at worst. She could handle skepticism. After all, with everything they had _all_ been through, every one of them had a reason to be skeptical. They just had to learn to trust each other again.

They all just needed to find their "new shape," as Patterson had said so long ago. They – "the pieces" – had changed, after all. It wasn't impossible, it would just take time, but Jane was encouraged, because she could already see how far they'd come. Looking at Kurt, she couldn't help but smile. She was doing more of that lately.

It was almost 6:00 pm when Kurt approached her workstation, grinning broadly.

"Ready to go?" he asked, looking extremely proud of himself.

She turned around in her chair and looked at him, a smile slowly crossing her face, growing until she was sure that it wasn't possible to smile any wider. For a minute she couldn't speak, she could only look at him in amazement. After all, she'd pictured moments like these many times, and it was still hard to believe that now she was _living_ them. He was smiling down at her with a look she was only now getting used to seeing again after so much time – the same smile that Kurt had always reserved just for her, the one that told her that at that moment, nothing else in the world was as important as she was.

He noticed that she had smiled broadly but hadn't answered, and he raised his eyebrows at her curiously. The wheels in her head were clearly turning, but for once they seemed to be grinding out happy thoughts, from what he could tell. After everything, it was so good to see her happy again.

Knowing that that was his way of asking her where in her mind she'd gone, she just chuckled and nodded her head. "Yeah," she replied happily. "Now let's get out of here before something happens and we have to save the world again." He chuckled right along with her then, because she was so right. It really had seemed like things used to happen as if precisely planned to get in their way. But that had been _before_. Now all of a sudden, as if a weight had lifted off of them, things seemed easier – and they certainly had earned a little bit of easy.

They managed to get out of the building quickly, and it was just barely after 6:00 pm by the time they made it out of the parking garage, which for them and the long days they often worked, still counted as very early. They headed to a bar near Kurt's apartment, because he had figured that that way, they could always walk back afterwards, if necessary. Not that he intended to over-do it. On the contrary, he wanted to remember every moment of this down time with Jane.

He'd _been_ in that place where he would drink because he didn't have her, or because of so many other tragedies in his life, but thankfully he wasn't there anymore. No, he had this new feeling lately that he didn't ever remember feeling so intensely in his life… he'd been surprised when he'd realized that what he was feeling was _happiness._

 _You're a little late to the party,_ his brain had said in amusement, _but you got there._

 _So this is what it's like_ , he couldn't help but think. Now, every time he looked at her, he felt that same awe again, because he was under no allusions – it was because of her, and he now knew how precious happiness was. He'd worked really damn hard for it, after all.

Thirty minutes later, they sat across the table from each other, each nursing a drink in the dimly lit bar. The clink of glasses and the buzz of conversation filtered through the air around them and they both felt it – a sense of awe, of wonder, and a feeling of gratitude. It had felt like they would never make it to this place, that they would never even get close, and they'd gone through Hell to get there… and yet, there they were, still standing. Well, sitting, actually.

He caught her staring into her now empty glass as if deep in thought, an unconscious smile on her face. It was nice to see her that way – smiling even when she wasn't conscious of her expression. That said something very promising about her state of mind. After watching her for a few seconds, he reached out to wrap his hand around hers, which toyed loosely with the bottom of the glass.

"You want another one?" It was somewhere between a statement and a question, actually, and she looked up at him, suddenly back from wherever she'd been.

"I don't know," she replied slowly. "Maybe I should save the other one you owe me so we can do this again." There was something so endearing about the way she looked at him just then, as the light from the tiny candle on the table reflected in her eyes, and the fact that she'd already thought ahead to them going out again… which in truth, he had as well. He hoped that this would be the first of many, many times that they went out. The thought of life stretching out before the two of them – together – suddenly felt like it held unlimited possibilities.

"What if I said," he began, loosely pulling her hand back across the table in his. "That we'll definitely do this again either way?"

The blush that crept across her cheeks as she smiled and looked down at their hands on the table, and then up at him, was one of the many, many things that he loved about her. After everything she had been through, she was still so easily flustered by something so small.

"So do you want another drink?" he asked her again.

"Okay," she replied, smiling back up at him. "But we should get some food, too. Someone keeps telling me that it's important to _eat_. And I _do_ remember what happens when I drink without eating anything…"

"This person – the one who keeps telling you to eat – sounds very wise," he said seriously, prompting her to roll her eyes at him.

"He can be a pain sometimes," she replied with a grin, "because he seems to _know_ exactly how wonderful he is, but I can't argue. He really is."

He laughed again, quietly, and squeezed her hand, watching her expression change slightly. Something was going through her mind, he could tell. He tilted his head, watching her carefully. She'd noticed that he did this often, usually when he was trying to figure out what she was thinking – which was most of the time, these days. She decided to save him the trouble.

"I was just trying to commit every detail of this moment to memory," she told him matter-of-factly. "I have to make sure I remember this." His hand squeezed hers again, and he just nodded, smiling. He knew the feeling.

There were so many things that she had no memory of, even though now she knew that that was for the best, and so many others that they both desperately wanted to forget… but this, this moment was one that they would make sure to remember.


	5. Not Ever

**Disclaimer: I do not own Blindspot. I only** _ **wish**_ **I owned Blindspot. More like it's the other way around… I've come to realize that THEY own ME. :) (The … indicate The Script song lyrics, which I also DO NOT own. I'm nowhere near talented enough)**

 _A/N: I haven't said it enough, but I've been so grateful for your reviews, and I've really been floored by the enthusiasm of some of them. Thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to leave one. This story is simply more proof that I cannot write one shots to save my life (because that was my original concept), but I'm so glad I didn't try to force it to be one. That being said, I had planned for this to be the last chapter. And then I had another idea... This is pretty much how it usually goes for me. So there's at least one more chapter. Beyond that, we'll see. :)_

…

… _ **She's in line at the dole with her head held high  
**_

 _ **While I just lost my job but didn't lose my pride  
**_

 _ **But we both know how we're gonna make it work when it hurts  
**_

 _ **When you pick yourself up you get kicked to the dirt**_

 _ **Trying to make it work but man these times are hard…**_

…

 _ **The first time she called him when she'd had a nightmare, he felt strangely relieved.**_

He'd gotten into the habit going to her safe house to check on her instead of calling. There were several excuses that he gave her – she hadn't answered her phone (even when her phone hadn't received any calls, making her suspicious about whether he'd even tried to call), he'd been in the neighborhood… silly things like that – none of which she actually believed, but she didn't mind. On the contrary, the fact that he went to the trouble to come over in person was sweet, and she preferred his company to a call or a text, anyway.

Apparently, after Nas had been arrested and Sandstorm no longer had a flow of information from inside the FBI, taking them down had proven easier than anticipated – _not_ that it had been easy. They hadn't gone down without a fight, that was for sure, and the casualties had been numerous. Among the fatalities were both Shepherd and Roman, and Jane had taken this very hard. Never mind that they had been _Remi's_ family, still, despite the horrible things they had done, their somewhat scary fanaticism and the fact that she had no memory of her life with them, they had been all of the family that she had. It felt like she'd only _just_ found out that she had _that_ much when she'd lost them.

Except that they _hadn't_ been her only family. While equally dysfunctional, simply in a different way – one that thankfully included far less violence, the team at the FBI was coming back together as a family, slowly, but more every day. The Sandstorm raid had been a major turning point, and now, when Jane walked into the office, people smiled at her. _Even Zapata_. Finally, they were finding their new shape again.

Now, however, as everyone finally began to accept Jane, as she had wished for, she was once again pulling away. She'd been purposely keeping to herself more and more lately, Kurt had noticed, now almost a month after Sandstorm had been taken out. The more she withdrew, however, the more he reached out to her, and he wasn't going to let her isolate herself. He was simply unwilling to let her convince herself that she was alone, no matter how determined she seemed to do just that.

This time when Kurt showed up at her safe house, however, it was different than the others. He would willingly have camped out on her couch any night that she wanted him to – or that she'd _let_ him, really – but Jane had insisted that her nightmares had lessened, albeit slowly, despite the fact that they hadn't gone away altogether. The only reason he relented, in the end, the only thing that convinced him to leave her at the end of every day, was because every day he made her look into his eyes and promise him one thing – that if she needed him for _any_ reason, she would call him, no matter what.

She'd been promising this for several weeks, but she hadn't actually done it, and Kurt was beginning to wonder if she'd really been suffering in silence, after all. So when his phone went off at 2:26 am that morning and he saw her name on the display, he was concerned but at the same time, relieved.

The phone had barely buzzed once when he already had it by his ear. "Jane, you okay?" he asked, still groggy, even though he knew that if she was calling him, she was probably not okay.

He heard her inhale sharply, and felt his heart clenching. He was already out of bed, pulling on sweatpants, a sweatshirt, socks and a baseball cap before she'd said a word.

"Yeah," she said in a voice that sounded anything _but_ okay.

"I'm walking out the door now. I'll see you in fifteen minutes," he told her, closing the door to his apartment quietly and turning the key in the lock. He didn't hang up, however, thinking that she might prefer him to keep talking.

"The same dream again?" he asked, pushing the door of the stairwell open. He didn't have time to wait for the elevator, and he didn't want to lose the phone connection with her anyway. Another minute later, after practically flying down the stairs, he was outside his building. It was the same door through which Sawyer had used, the night that he'd come across him kissing Jane so long ago. The same night that so many things had been set in motion…

He raced past the spot, allowing himself to feel the intensity of their kiss, but nothing else about that night. The rest of it was better left in the past. Continuing to ask her gentle yes or no questions and attempting to make conversation that would fall into the "better than nothing" category, simply to keep her mind occupied until he got there, he jumped into his car and put his phone on speaker, focused on getting to her safe house as quickly as possible.

Arriving in record time, he parked along the curb in front of her building and didn't even have a chance to knock before she opened the door, both of them just having hung up their phones. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him, watching as she shrank back against the wall, using it to hold her up. She was staring at something just above him, and suddenly there was a hint of something in her eyes that hadn't been there when she'd first opened the door. What was wrong?

Glancing upward, he caught sight of the front of his baseball cap, and the recognition hit him immediately. _Shit_ , he thought, angry with himself. _Nice, Weller. You've never worn a baseball cap except the day you went to pick her up when she was running from the CIA, and you had your gun ready to point at her, when she was already traumatized._ He immediately pulled the hat off of his head and threw it to the floor beside the door, raising his hands to his sides in surrender.

"Sorry, Jane," he mumbled quietly, taking one step toward her and then stopping, wanting to make sure that he hadn't just made it worse. After all, she'd just had a nightmare that was bad enough that she'd needed to call him. She nodded her head, looking less panicked, and slowly stepped forward away from the wall. She was wearing a long sleeved black t-shirt and blue plaid pajama pants, her hair was sticking up in all directions and her face looked like exactly who she was – someone who'd just had a nightmare.

In other words, she was as beautiful as ever.

"Come here," he said soothingly, pulling her toward him into a tight hug and noticing that she was still shaking. Her nightmares had changed again recently, she'd told him. She didn't have the "happy nightmares" that had plagued her for a few months anymore, which he took to mean that she was feeling better about things between them. This, at least, was positive, even if the return of nightmares was not.

However, ever since they'd taken down Sandstorm, she'd been experiencing the raid – specifically the part where Shepherd and Roman had been taken out in a massive explosion – again and again in her dreams. Sometimes there was more to them, sometimes that was it, but she always woke up shaken, shaking and distraught. This time, she'd actually woken herself up because she was screaming, and she was a little bit concerned that her detail hadn't seemed to notice.

Kurt had seen Jane after she'd had nightmares once or twice before, but he'd never seen her _this_ upset from one, and as he tried his best to calm her down, he found himself worried about her.

It seemed that she'd been just barely holding on while she'd waited for him, but now that he was there, it all came pouring out. The harder she cried, the harder he held onto her, until finally the sobs slowed and she found that she had literally no more energy to cry.

"You should try to go back to sleep," he told her, to which she began shaking her head emphatically. He hadn't made a move to let go of her, and yet she was suddenly clinging to him as if her life depended on it. He could even feel her fingernails leaving indentations in his skin. Smiling just a little at the ferocity with which she was hanging on, and thinking that his earlier assessment of her – that she couldn't let herself do _anything_ halfway – had been true, he ran one hand over her hair, made a "ssshhh-ing" noise and held onto her tightly with his other arm.

"I'm right here, Jane," he reminded her. "I didn't say I was going anywhere, did I? It's okay…" She let out a shaky sigh against him, and he couldn't help but be glad that she'd called him. _Please tell me this hasn't happened before…_ he thought, trying to imagine her dealing with this level of emotion on her own. "Can I make you some tea?" he asked softly.

There was a time when tea had reminded her of Oscar, and Oolong tea probably always would, but she'd discovered that there were other kinds that she liked, that didn't taste like grass trimmings and also didn't bring back painful memories, either. She nodded against his shoulder.

"Okay," he continued, keeping his voice even, "so we'll have some tea, and _then_ we'll try the back to sleep thing, okay?" he asked calmly, still running his hand over her hair soothingly, from the top of her head down to her back and then lifting his hand and repeating the motion. He didn't know if this plan would actually _work,_ but it was worth a shot. If nothing else, it gave her something simple to focus on while she calmed down.

"Maybe" she whispered in a small voice.

"I'll take that as a step in the right direction," he replied. Lifting his left arm off of her slowly, he pulled his right arm around her tighter. "Let's go to the kitchen," he murmured, lest she think that he was simply letting go. They moved slowly in the direction of the kitchen, pausing before the doorway through which they had to pass. She was calm now, her breathing normal, and he turned his head to look into her eyes. This, in turn, caused her to look at him as well, and they stood there for a few seconds with their faces close together. As he often did when they stood close together, he thought about kissing her, but it wasn't the right time, and she was far from in the right frame of mind.

So he simply smiled at her, his attention on her and nothing else around them, as it always was, and he couldn't help but think that though it was a painful nightmare that had brought him there at that hour, he was glad that he'd had an excuse to be there. He wondered if maybe he shouldn't think up some other reasons that she shouldn't be there alone so much, or that he should maybe just insist exactly that and tell her that he didn't think she should be there alone so much.

 _That probably wouldn't go over well,_ he told himself.

Jane was fiercely independent, of course, but lately when she insisted she was fine it wasn't Jane being independent, it was Jane pushing him – and everyone else – away. Somehow he needed to remind her that she didn't need to do that, but he knew that that was a hard thing for her to remember, especially now that she'd just lost two people for whom her feelings had been so complicated, and she was undoubtedly afraid to feel close to anyone else. He could see it clearly when he looked in her eyes these days, as he was now.

They were still looking into each other's eyes intently, and she wondered for a second whether he had abandoned the idea of tea completely as they stood still in front of the narrow doorway. That was the moment when he tightened his grip on her slightly, pressing them just a little closer together so that they could make it through the doorway without having to break apart. Warmth flooded through her, taking away some of the sting of the nightmare she'd had and making her heart beat just a little faster. There was no denying that she liked to be that close to him, and she couldn't help but smile just a little bit. It was a smile that he was relieved to see.

Once in the kitchen, when he'd turned the dial to begin heating the water, taken out the only two mugs she had along with a box of tea bags, all while still holding onto her with one arm – which had become something of a comedy routine at some point – the two of them leaned against the counter side by side. They listened to the low rumbling from the kettle as the water began warming up, and as she leaned her head on his shoulder, he tilted his head down to rest his cheek on the top of her head.

They stood there in sleepy silence until the kettle began to whistle, which roused them both, forcing them to lift their heads off of the other. A few minutes later, tea in hand, they were sitting on the couch back in the living room, this time close enough that their shoulders touched when they leaned back. The tea was still hot, so for the moment they just sat holding the mugs carefully and blowing across the surface, watching the steam swirl in the air. It was the kind of soothing quiet that somehow, neither of them seemed to be able to create when they were home alone.

 _What had Dr. Borden suggested a while back?_ Jane asked herself. _Oh, yes. That she and Kurt should try being "alone together," to help each other with the isolation and loneliness that they were both feeling._ While there may have been a little bit of that in the time that they'd been spending together lately, that wasn't how she would characterize it. Being "alone together" suggested that they were merely spending time together in order not to be alone, which was absolutely not the case. On the contrary, Jane would never have tolerated anyone's presence just to have someone around. Lately she had no wish to spend time with anyone but Kurt. Even though the others meant well, she simply wasn't ready. She didn't let him into her life merely to have someone there, but because she _wanted_ him there.

Holding the warm mug carefully in front of her, Jane closed her eyes and breathed deeply, inhaling not just the scent of the tea, but the moment itself. Somehow, it seemed like Kurt always knew when to show up. This was the first time she'd needed to call him, because usually when she was thinking that she needed him, or that she would like his company, he just seemed to appear at her door not long afterwards – or at the very least call or text her. Her nights hadn't been _too_ bad lately, nothing that she couldn't handle, but the dream she'd had that night had affected her more than most – though she wasn't sure _why_. It didn't matter, in the end, and she was trying _not_ to remember it.

At that moment, she was enormously grateful not to have to think about that dream, simply concentrating on Kurt's silent presence beside her. She had been somewhat numb to her feelings in general lately – she had been that way ever since the night of the Sandstorm raid. That night coming on the heels of, well, everything else in her life, had simply been more than she could handle without putting a stopper in her emotions.

She could feel that things didn't affect her as deeply as they once had, and she knew that that was supposed to be a sign of a problem, but at this point, even when she knew that she needed to face her emotions in order to move on, she found that she couldn't make herself. Her feeling about, well, _everything_ felt as if they had been turned down in intensity, so that they barely registered in her brain, if they did at all, and she just watched as things that she had once used to enjoy – various foods, sketching, socializing with coworkers – simply struck her as unnecessary.

It had been like that for the past month, as if she had simply reached her emotional limit. She couldn't help but wonder if this was it. Would she feel like this indefinitely? It was like floating in limbo.

The only time when she felt just a little bit more like herself was when Kurt was around. She considered that for a moment. _Feeling more like myself_. It seemed like a foreign concept, because in the past she'd never once felt that she knew _who she was_. How can you feel like yourself if you don't know yourself? But now, suddenly, she was starting to realize that just maybe, she _did_ know who she was, for better or worse. Or at least, she was starting to be able to see herself the way Kurt saw her. That was certainly a more positive picture of her than she saw when she thought about her own view of herself. It was all enough to make her head hurt.

Of course, she would never be the same person she'd been before her memory was erased, and she was _glad_ about that. She felt badly for Remi, who'd had such a hard life, but she had no desire to _be_ her. No, she hadn't been able to be Remi even when she had _tried_. Now with Shepherd and Roman gone, there was no one left who even remembered Remi. It was a sad thought, despite the fact that she knew that Remi had been a pretty dangerous person. But at the very least, now she was free to be Jane.

In the same way that she would never again be Remi, she would also never again be the same Jane who had crawled out of the bag in Times Square, either. Yes, she was still _Jane_ , and she was more like that woman than she was like Remi, but the things she had been through in the short time she had been Jane had made her very distinctly _not_ the innocent woman that Kurt had met in the interrogation room. She'd come to terms with this, with her failures and bad decisions, and thanks to Kurt, she had learned an important lesson: sometimes, the only thing you can do is to forgive yourself and move on.

Of course, moving on was much easier when you weren't doing it alone, which they had _both_ finally come to realize. And now they weren't, as simple as that.

"Did you fall asleep?" She heard his voice close to her ear, soft and deep, and it made her smile.

"No," she replied, slowly opening her eyes and turning her head to look up at him. "I was just taking it all in."

He took a drink of his tea, nodding his head and smiling at her. "It's cooled off, I think," he told her. "You may be able to drink it now."

Bringing the cup up to her lips and sipping slowly, she found that he was right. It was still hot, but cool enough to drink. _Perfect._ They sat and sipped their tea for a few minutes before she set hers down on the coffee table, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees, her head against her hands. Sitting up beside her, he put his tea down on the table as well, bringing his right hand up to the back of her neck, moving his thumb gently across her skin.

"Getting tired?" he asked. She obviously was, and he'd be lying if he said that he wasn't tired as well. It was just after 3:30 am, so there were still a few hours left before either of them ever arrived in the office on their earliest days. Still time to sleep a little more, if he could convince her to try.

She shook her head empathically, but only seconds later she was also yawning, the two motions overlapping. Chuckling, he replied, "No, obviously not." She glared at him playfully and picked up her tea once more, drinking so that she wouldn't have to reply. He watched her in amusement and nodded, picking up his own tea as well.

"Fair enough, though," he added, "I did say we'd have tea and _then_ try going back to sleep. So finish up." Leaning towards her, he peered into her mug to see how much was left. She was holding her mug close to her, so his face was now literally only a few inches – maybe three? – from hers. She found herself thinking that besides earlier, in the doorway, the only other times when they'd been that close to each other had been the times when they had kissed. The first time, when she had kissed him outside of his apartment building, and the second time, when he had kissed her in the locker room. Her heart was beating wildly in her chest, but at the same time, she was terrified.

After all, as perfect as those kisses had been, they had gone hand in hand with the times when her world had come crashing down on her head. And besides that, even, though she knew in theory that she wanted to kiss him again, at the same time her need to push everyone away, to keep them all at arms' length, that ghost whispered in her ear that he would be better off without her. After all, only heartache seemed to follow her, and he'd had more than enough of that for a lifetime.

Before he leaned back again, his eyes shifted up to look at her intently. For a few seconds she found that she couldn't look away – she was as mesmerized by him as he was by her. In his eyes, she saw so many things – all of the kindness and compassion that he had shown her since that day in the locker room, but so much more than that as well. She saw the very reason that she knew she could trust him, namely, somehow she could _see_ just how much he cared about her, though of course she knew how ridiculous that sounded.

She thought for the thousandth time how she did not deserve this man or how good he was to her, and felt herself blushing once again, her face growing hot. Though she looked away self-consciously, she couldn't stop smiling, the urge to push him away all but disappearing. Still without leaning back, he whispered, "Okay, two more minutes, Jane." Her eyes darted back to him and she nodded slightly, finding that she was disappointed when he finally leaned away from her, out of what could have been described as her personal space. He was still very close to her, of course, but he suddenly seemed _much_ too far away.

They finished their tea quietly, setting the cups down on the coffee table reluctantly at almost the same time. As he stood up and stretched, she fidgeted with her fingers, knowing what he was going to say. Without a word, he picked up both mugs and walked back to the kitchen, where he washed them out with the scrub brush that sat beside the sink and then sat them on the counter to dry. He did this slowly and deliberately, knowing that she was dreading the idea of going back to sleep and not quite sure how he was going to accomplish it.

She was leaning forward again, looking anxious, when he walked back into the living room and approached the couch. He stopped in front of her and waited, but she didn't look up, just continued to fidget. He reached down and put his hand on her shoulder, moving his thumb back and forth slightly. "Nothing to be scared of," he said softly. "Come on."

She nodded and stood up slowly, looking anything but relaxed. He reached down and took her hand, squeezing it in his, and tugged her toward the stairs. When she didn't move, he stopped and turned back to look at her, then smiled. He stepped back towards her, using his free hand to push a strand of hair behind her ear and then letting his hand fall back to his side. His other hand still held one of hers.

"Do you trust me?" he asked.

 _Do_ _ **I**_ _trust_ _ **him**_ _?_ she repeated in her head. _If anyone shouldn't trust anyone, it should be the other way around_. Besides, he'd been absolutely nothing but sweet and honest with her since they had finally _really_ talked that night in the locker room. _Of course_ she trusted him. The thought that he might think otherwise only occurred to her then, and she just couldn't let that happen.

"Of course I do," she replied quietly, concern written on her face.

"Then… just come upstairs and let's sit and talk. Maybe even rest. There's a few more hours until the sun comes up, and I have a feeling that you're even more tired than I am…" He stopped to yawn. "And I'm pretty damn tired."

"I'm sorry," she said quickly. "For making you—"

"Not another word about that," he replied, lifting an index finger up to her lips. "I told you to call me if you needed me. For _any_ reason. No matter what time it was. And if you hadn't called me for something like this… I would've been upset." He paused for a second, and she looked at the floor, but smiled. A second later she looked back up at him, and at the same time, they both realized that his finger was still against her lips. He pulled it back hesitantly, as if moving in slow motion, and his hand slid to her cheek, turning so that his fingers fanned out gently while his thumb moved slowly back and forth across the smooth skin.

"I'm glad you called me, and I'm glad I'm here…" he continued. "That doesn't change because I'm tired. And you're tired, too. A lot more tired than I am, even." She nodded reluctantly, knowing that her determination to stay awake after her dream was quickly disappearing, especially because nothing seemed quite as threatening when he was beside her. He let his hand drop from her cheek and once again took a step toward the stairs, tugging on her hand gently.

"So come on, let's go sit down," he said, looking into her eyes. "Before we _fall_ down." This time she just smiled, nodded slowly and allowed herself to be tugged along behind him. While she felt slightly awkward about the fact that she was following Kurt in the direction of her bedroom, at the same time she knew that with him, she had nothing to worry about. Despite a lot of ugliness between the two of them in their shared past, he would sooner hurt himself than do anything to hurt her. The ways that they had both hurt each other in the past… that was the past. Besides, it was late, and she was exhausted. As much as she dreaded another dream, she felt safe with him – even from her nightmares.

He stood aside so that she could go up the stairs first, and then followed her to the door of her bedroom. As she wandered toward the bathroom, he leaned against the doorframe and watched her. Before she closed the door behind her, she waved her arm casually toward the bed, the only thing in the room to sit on.

"Have a seat," she told him, as if it was no big deal. It was and it wasn't, he supposed. Somehow, things that might have felt awkward with other people just didn't feel awkward with Jane. If anything, he felt like maybe the situation _should_ have felt awkward, but didn't.

 _That's just crazy,_ he told himself tiredly. _It makes no sense._ And yet, that was simply the way it was.

He walked over to her bed, sitting down at the foot of it, his legs over the side, suddenly feeling less confident in what he was doing here. She'd said she didn't want him to go… and that was fine. So now… Maybe he was just too tired to think straight.

The bathroom door opened then, and when she saw him sitting there, she smiled at him, walking back in his direction slowly.

She'd thought of sitting down beside him, maybe leaning on his shoulder, but then suddenly she felt like she should have a little space between them. Not because he'd done anything wrong – far from it. Maybe it was because this was her bedroom… They'd been growing closer even before the Sandstorm raid, but after that night… it had been hard, losing the only two people in the world who were a part of her past, even if she had no longer been the person they had known, and she'd withdrawn slightly from everyone, even Kurt.

Kurt had been nothing but understanding, and he'd given her exactly the right amount of space – that is to say, he made sure to keep her company just as often, but he didn't force her to talk, nor did he panic when she seemed extra withdrawn. His physical presence, as it had when they'd first met, soothed her aching soul, and the fact that she knew that she could talk as much or as little about what she needed or wanted to talk about… there was nothing that could have helped her more. He always seemed to know when to sit close to her, and when to leave space between them – either he was psychic, or he could simply read her with stunning accuracy. Either way, there was nothing she liked more than having him around.

She walked by him, just out of his reach, to the same side of the bed on which he sat, but the other end. Knowing that he was watching her carefully, she climbed onto the bed and pushed the pillow up against the headboard so that she could sit back comfortably against it, facing him.

He was watching her with interest, not a hint of impatience or stress on his face or in his body language. The only thing that was clear in his face was that he was concerned about her.

Glancing at the pillow on the other side of the queen sized bed, she pointed her thumb towards it and said, "I saved you a spot." She realized immediately afterwards that her offer could have been taken to mean more than what she intended it to – which was that he was welcome to sit where it was more comfortable – but immediately reminded herself that Kurt had a talent for _not_ misunderstanding her.

"Oh, wow, that was so nice of you," he replied jokingly, standing up and walking around to the other side. He climbed up onto the bed just as she had, but instead of sitting back against the headboard, he laid down on his left side, facing her. His head flopped down onto the pillow, his left arm tucked underneath it, and he looked over at her with a sleepy smile, like this was perfectly normal.

"How do you do that?" she asked him, looking at him curiously.

He looked back at her with the same kind of curiosity. "How do I do _what_?" he asked in a soft voice, sensing that a "bigger question," so to speak, was coming.

"How do you make everything so simple?" she asked him.

He shrugged, looking back at her fondly. "I don't know. I guess because that's how it feels. I mean, don't get me wrong. My life has become _infinitely_ more complicated since I met you… And nothing with us has _ever_ been simple… has it?" He watched her as her expression changed several times in as many seconds. She was clearly remembering the various parts of their "anything but simple" time together. It was only seconds, however, before she focused on him again, and her smile returned.

"No," she replied, her smile and her voice displaying equal warmth. "So… how do you do it?" she asked again.

His smile intensified then, and once again he shrugged. "I just…" He struggled to find the words, and for a few seconds, nothing came out of his mouth. Jane couldn't help but feel like this just made him even more adorable than he already was, especially lying there sleepy on her pillow.

"I guess after everything we've already been through, and the fact that we're still here, the rest of it just doesn't seem important when…" She was watching him intently, and for a second he felt a little shy.

Almost immediately he felt silly. _It's Jane_ , _for goodness sake,_ he reminded himself, _you know very well that you would do just about anything for her._ The thought made him smile, because it was true.

"… Nothing else feels important when I'm around you," he finished, watching her reaction. She swallowed hard, and he could see the wheels turning in her head, could see her processing his words. As she turned back to lean her head against the headboard behind her back, staring forward at the wall across the room from her, a sad smile crept across her face. Sometimes, despite the absolute sweetness, sincerity and innocence of his words, she still felt like she was falling.

 _No,_ she corrected herself, _it's not despite his words. It's_ _ **because**_ _of them._ Maybe it was the idea of getting close to him, of having something that meant so much, some _one_ who meant so much, and how much it would hurt if it was ripped away, again… That was a scar she carried that might be there for as long as her tattoos – albeit an emotional one. It might _never_ go away. She wondered sadly if maybe she was simply too damaged to be able to accept his kindness. The thought only reinforced the desperate spiral that she already felt herself trapped in, and she closed her eyes in an attempt to make the emotions stop bombarding her. It didn't work, of course.

He continued to watch as her expression, which had been happy, seemed to crumble. It wasn't that she wished he hadn't said what he'd said, despite how desperately sad she now looked. He _knew_ this. It was an advantage of knowing her the way he did, so that he needed very little explanation. He understood the way her brain worked, and he didn't take it personally when she reached her limit. No, it didn't mean that he shouldn't have said what he said. On the contrary, it meant that it was something that she needed to hear more of, until she could really let herself believe it without being scared.

"Jane," he whispered, feeling like the space between them was more than just the two feet or so that was actually between them. Suddenly that space felt like an ocean. He wanted to reach out to her, and he would in a few seconds, but something held him back just then. She needed time to process it all, he could just tell. Slowly, she turned back to look at him again. He swore it felt like it took an eternity for her just to turn her head, and when she did, the emptiness in her eyes was crushing. Looking at her just then, he wasn't sure he'd be able to leave her alone in her safe house again, ever. Not with the memory of the emptiness in her eyes, and the thought that by herself, she could be swimming in such sadness.

She inhaled slowly, as if it took a great effort, and he heard her breath shaking as she did. His right hand reached out across the chasm between them, stopping short of her, his palm upturned against the cool sheet, and she stared at it for so long it surprised him. Just then he wished for an actual telepathic link between them, and not just what _felt_ like one sometimes, so that he could reassure her of whatever doubts she had. He knew that he could probably guess correctly, or at least get close, but even so, his uncertainty frustrated him. _She_ wasn't frustrating him, he just wished he knew the right thing to say, the thing that would make her finally feel safe.

"You're not alone. Not ever. And you're not _going_ to be," he promised quietly. Because whatever else her thoughts her saying, he knew that that was at the heart of it. He had been her rock back then – it wasn't arrogance that led him to this conclusion, looking back now with the benefit of hindsight, he simply understood the dynamic between the two of them well enough to know this objectively. And then suddenly the world around her had been decimated, despite the best of their intentions.

The chain of events that had been set in motion after that first night when they kissed – and arguably long before that night - would have seemed impossible if it had all been a story that someone had told them. Those events had left lasting scars on Jane, both physical and emotional, and it was hard to say which ones were deeper and more painful for her. Her recovery would already have been a long road, and then, when she could least afford more heartache, she had lost Shepherd and Roman in the Sandstorm raid. As complicated as her relationship with them had been in her short memory of them, this loss on top of everything else had only made that feeling of isolation worse. As if she had _needed_ things to get worse.

Her breath caught in her throat, and she nodded quickly. Too quickly. While she wanted to believe him, she couldn't quite let herself… no matter how desperately she longed to.

"It's scary to believe that," she said quietly, turning herself back around towards him and scooting forward slightly. She put her hand into his outstretched palm and let his fingers close securely around hers, marveling at how she could feel infinitely better as soon as she did.

He wished that she would move closer, because she clearly needed more than just someone to hold her hand, but he just waited to see what she would do next.

"That's okay," he replied, watching her as she stared down at their hands. "After everything you've been through, if you were perfectly fine, _I'd_ be scared." She looked up at smiled weakly at his attempt at humor, and felt his fingers squeeze hers.

He was okay with having to tell her that she wasn't alone as many times as she needed to hear it, and with backing those words up with actions. For her, he would've done _far_ more than that. Then his voice turned serious again, and he said, "Besides, being scared just gives you the chance to be brave."

She looked up at him curiously, because she'd never heard him say that before, but the certainty with which the words had come out made her think that that was not the first time he'd uttered them. He looked away from her, and for a few seconds _he_ was the one who looked lost in thought, and if she wasn't mistaken, he suddenly looked like he was lost in thought. Now it was her turn to forget the ache she felt for her own pain and wonder what might have made him look so sad. When his eyes focused back on her again, the corners of his mouth turned up slightly, but there was sadness in his eyes. "I used to say that to Taylor when she was scared," he told her quietly.

That was something he'd never told her before, and she got the feeling that it was something that he had never shared with _anyone._ Her heart stopped for a second and her chest ached as she felt tears spring to her eyes on his behalf. Taylor Shaw was the most sensitive of topics between them after everything that had happened, representing loss for both of them – though Jane knew that hers paled in comparison with his. At the same time, her own words echoed in her head. _I never realized how easy it was being Taylor Shaw._

 _The poor little girl who he'd lost three times. When he was ten, when he found her remains, and when he realized that I wasn't her_ , she thought miserably.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, now suddenly holding tightly to _his_ hand and scooting forward so that there was no longer a wide gap between them. The space between her knees and where he lay on his side was now only an inch, at most, though she was still sitting up and he still lay on his side, looking up at her.

He shook his head, smiling up at her sadly. "Don't be," he said. "You may not be her, but you're a lot like her. For one thing, you've very brave, just like she always was." A few seconds went by, and then he added, "She would've liked you a lot." She bit her lip, sure that she was about to cry.

Then without warning, an amused smile spread across his face. "You know what? I was supposed to be reassuring _you_ , not the other way around." Laughing lightly, her watery smiled widened into a grin. It was true. Just a minute ago she'd been falling into an abyss of loneliness, one that she had immediately abandoned when she thought that _he_ needed reassuring.

"Sorry," she said, trying to stifle her grin. "Please continue." Doing her best to look at him with a straight face, it was all she could do not to laugh.

She wanted nothing more than to tell him yet again that she didn't deserve someone who was so kind to her, didn't deserve forgiveness after all of the things she'd done, or one of a million different variations of these things that she'd told him in the past. But she knew that he wouldn't let her get past the "I don't deserve" before he silenced her.

 _That tells you something,_ she told herself. And so she didn't even bother.

His voice broke through her thoughts again. "I don't remember what I was saying, other than the fact that you're not going to be alone, but... that's really all that matters, right? Do you need proof?" He looked at her as if issuing a challenge, and she simply raised her eyebrows at him, her smile spreading across her face again. "I'm here, aren't I?" he asked.

"You are," she whispered, smiling down at him, all traces of anguish gone from her face. "Lucky me."

He smiled at her once again, a long yawn escaping from him. "We'll argue about who's the lucky one another time, okay? Right now it's time to go back to sleep. We're not going to solve it all tonight. Probably not even this year. But we _will_ , okay? You're going to be okay. _We're_ going to be okay."

His words were familiar, and they weren't lost on her. He'd told her back at the beginning, when she had only just become Jane, that she was going to be okay. She'd had no idea what that meant, back then. Now she did, even though she still wasn't okay. Not yet… But finally, now it seemed like that might actually be possible. Someday soon. And besides, she felt more okay in _that_ moment than at any other time in her memory.

Nodding her head slowly, as if his words since she'd sat down on the bed had all just penetrated her head at once, he watched as her smile grew wider. Turning back behind her, she tugged her pillow closer to him, shifting so that she was nearly sitting on the pillow as she attempted to lift the covers and climb under them, while still holding onto his hand. Once she stopped moving, settled against the pillow with the covers on top of her, there was now only a tiny space – maybe an inch – between the corners of their pillows. Each of them now lay with their heads in the middle of their respective pillow, so that the space between them was far smaller, but definitely still there. Then again, thinking back to how far apart they'd been a few months ago, in every way possible, the chance to be where he was just then was truly a miracle.

Their interlocked fingers now lay in between them on top of the blanket in front of Kurt, who also lay on top of the blanket. He was sagging a little, but still propped up against his left elbow, his arm under his pillow and his head leaning against his hand as he watched her with interest. Now she smiled at him, no longer sadly, and it warmed his heart. He knew how hard it was for her to trust him, and he also knew that that was something he would be working on for a while. He had no problem with that. Whatever it took, it was worth it.

"Sleep now?" he asked, yawning. It was nearly 4:00 am, but they could afford at least an hour or sleep, if not two.

"Okay," she agreed, her eyes already starting to close. Just before they did, her eyes suddenly shot open again as if she'd just thought of something. "You're not…?" It was half a question, but it was plenty.

"No, Jane, I'll be right here," he told her calmly. That was all she needed to hear, and she sank back down, her eyes already closed by the time her head hit her pillow.

Even after she fell asleep, the smile remained on her face, and he couldn't help but think that there wasn't anyone else in the world who was as beautiful as she was.

Just before he fell asleep himself, he vowed to tell her that when they woke up in a few hours.

 _A/N: Over the course of my last few stories (Poison Ivy, Beach Weekend and now this one) I've come to realize that I love writing pillow talk. I'm trying to keep it from getting repetitive, so hopefully I succeeded at that. I guess I just find these two so cute when they're sleepy (cuter than all the_ _ **other**_ _times when they're so cute, that is)._


	6. Always the Exception

**Disclaimer: I do not own Blindspot. I only** _ **wish**_ **I owned Blindspot. More like it's the other way around… I've come to realize that THEY own ME. :) (The … indicate The Script song lyrics, which I also DO NOT own. I'm nowhere near talented enough)**

 _A/N: So, a funny thing happened while I was writing this chapter. The last chapter. It had two sections, and the second one grew out of control as I was writing it. And then I said, "This is really too long, maybe I should split it in two? Nobody would mind…" But it was very unevenly split between the two sections. When I looked at the first one, suddenly I had tons more ideas for that one, too. So, long story short, once again this is not the last chapter. I'm 98% sure that the NEXT chapter will be the last one (but then again, I've been wrong before…), and that one is practically finished as well. Anyway, just read this chapter, and I hope you enjoy it._

…

 _ **Smiling but we're close to tears  
Even after all these years**_

…

 _ **The first time he kissed her, well, it wasn't really the first time. It was the third. And actually, she kissed him – which was the second time that THAT had happened. But somehow, none of that mattered… in a way, it was the first time all over again.**_

It was a few nights after the night she'd called him after her nightmare. They'd gone out for dinner, taking advantage of the fact that they didn't have a case that kept them working late that night, and had just arrived back at her place, somewhere between "too early to call it a night" and "It's late, so I should go." Besides, neither of them wanted the night to be over, anyway. And then there was the fact that ever since he had found her huddled in the corner of her room hiding from her nightmares, he hadn't too thrilled with leaving her alone at night at all. It was a continuing discussion between the two of them.

He'd come inside, not intending to stay too long, but not against sticking around if that was what she wanted. Basically, it was up to her, just like always. He'd been taking his cues from her for a while now, and that seemed to be working out. Slowly but steadily, she seemed to be pushing him away less and less.

"Do you want some tea?" he asked as they took off their jackets. It was cold outside, and they both shivered slightly at the loss of the outer layer they'd been wearing.

"Good idea," she said with a smile as she moved toward the kitchen.

"Relax," he told her, "I'll get it."

She stopped and watched him as he walked to the kitchen, smiling at his back and shaking her head as she sat down on the couch. Flipping on the TV, she almost immediately found the show she had only recently discovered, but had quickly adopted as her favorite – _American Ninja Warrior._ Of course, it wasn't as though she'd found anything else on TV remotely amusing, so the fact that the show was her "favorite" didn't mean much. It was simply the one show that she enjoyed, so far. Kurt had told her that there was also a Japanese version of the show, which she assumed that she would like just as much.

 _Besides,_ Kurt had joked, _you probably speak Japanese, too, and just haven't realized it yet._ He loved to tease her that way, just assuming that she could do everything, even when it was a little bit ridiculous.

 _Surely, if I spoke Japanese, I would've realized it by now,_ she had argued. _Go ahead, show me something in Japanese and let's find out._ But he had just chuckled at his own joke and shook his head.

 _You never know,_ he'd said. _I never would have thought that you spoke Bulgarian…_

So many of her memories were painful, both the short black and white flashes from before, when she'd been Remi, as well as the ones she remembered more vividly, as Jane, but anything that reminded her of the day they'd first met Rich Dotcom was now a happy memory. It hadn't always been that way, but ever since she and Kurt had managed to mend their broken relationship, she could now remember that day fondly.

It was true that she _still_ didn't know what exactly was between them, though if she'd had a guess, she thought that somehow, Rich had been right all along. What had he said about the chemistry between herself and Kurt that day? That it was, "insane?" Something like that. Whatever he'd said, he'd meant that they were meant for each other – as much as it had annoyed her to hear him say it all of those times. He may have been one of the criminals they had to catch – repeatedly, to their annoyance – but she could no longer disagree with his initial assessment of their relationship – these days it did, indeed, feel like she and Kurt were meant for each other.

Her mind wandered through that day, as it had so many times since then. His eyes on her… scanning the crowd, then always back to her. And yes, he was a trained operative, but she had always wondered how much of the roles they played that day had been real, and where the line had blurred. She could have been completely wrong, of course, but she swore that at least some of it had been real. At least, it had felt real to _her_ … but then again, she wasn't an FBI agent.

"Never married," he'd told her. "I'm too choosy." And of course, he hadn't _said_ anything to make her believe that he would have chosen her, but his eyes said differently. Whether it was part of the act or not…

 _You could just ask him_ , the voice in her head suggested. _After all this time… You certainly weren't shy about asking him personal questions that day – if he'd ever been married, asking about Allie… and he answered them. You know each other so much better now, why in the world wouldn't he tell you that?_ Her lips curled into a smile. Her inner voice had a point.

She was curled up on the couch with the beige blanket over her, watching in amusement as contestant after contestant lost their balance on the Ninja Warrior obstacles as she waited for Kurt to join her. _These people need some serious training,_ she thought to herself. A brief memory of her own training in the woods, one of the few black and white images that was all that remained of that time in her mind, flashed quickly through her head. She didn't dwell on it, however. It was in the past, and she was slowly getting better at leaving it there… though she had to admit that it did sting, and a little bit more since the ill-fated Sandstorm raid.

Instead, she focused on what she wanted to ask Kurt. For some reason, she was a little bit nervous. When he came back into the room a few minutes later with two mugs of tea, which he set down on the coffee table to cool, he chuckled when saw what she was watching. _Of course_. It was the only show she'd shown any interest in so far whatsoever.

"You could win this with your eyes closed," he told her as he sat down close beside her, meaning it sincerely. "Possibly also with your hands tied behind your back. The silly mistakes that these contestants are making? You would never be that careless. And the few that made it to the end of the course? You would've done it in half the time."He was absolutely certain.

She turned to look at him in amusement, scooting closer so that she could lean against him and spread the blanket out so that it covered both of them. She laid her head against his shoulder, but only for a few seconds before she lifted it up and looked back up at him, leaning back slightly to take in his expression.

"Hey, speaking of your unfailing confidence in my obscure talents," she said, thinking that he had just provided her with a very nice transition, "I was just thinking about our first undercover mission."

He looked at her for only a few seconds before replying, "Rich Dotcom and the WitSec List?" He smiled as he remembered that day. When she nodded, he almost sighed. "I know that putting our lives in danger isn't supposed to be fun… but…"

"But it was fun," she finished his sentences for him. "That was what I was thinking."

"What made you think of that?" he asked curiously.

"This show made me think of how you always tell me I can do crazy things and I just don't know it – exactly like you just did. That I have all these… _hidden talents_."

In her head, she heard his words that day as clearly as if he were saying them now. _You're not the only one with hidden talents._

And of course, he was thinking of the same thing at the same time, and couldn't help but smile at her.

"For example, when we discovered I could speak Bulgarian, just in time to stop you from getting shot," she continued. Then suddenly she looked at him curiously, and it was clear to him that there was a question coming.

"On that mission," she began slowly. "When we were pretending to be married…"

"Yes…" he said, watching her carefully, thinking that he couldn't love her any more if they _were_ married. He took her right hand in his, tracing the honeycomb pattern on the back of it.

"Had you ever done that before that day? Pretending… to be married, I mean… For a mission?" she asked.

He could tell that this wasn't what she really wanted to know, but he knew that she'd get to her point. "Pretending to be married? No. Why?"

She made a face, as if she was absorbing this information but psyching herself up for another question. "Jane," he said softly, smiling at her, "what do you _really_ want to know?"

She blushed and looked away, smiling with embarrassment. "I've always wondered…" she began slowly. "Because, I mean, I'm not a trained FBI agent, so maybe I…" She pursed her lips, then shook her head.

"What?" he asked again, looking into her eyes and smiling.

Swallowing hard, she decided that she just needed to spit it out. "Was all of it just you, pretending? I mean, we barely knew each other then, and I know that the whole point was to be convincing, or they would've killed us…" Her words were tumbling out now, and she was beginning to regret bringing up the subject at all. _What do I say if… No, wait… What do I say either way?_ she thought, quickly feeling panic rising inside her. She said it anyway, though, because at that point, what did she have to lose? "But was there any of it that _wasn't_ just… an act?"

 _How is it possible that this question makes me love her more, when I didn't think that was possible?_ he wondered.

"Well, obviously at least _some of it_ was an act, since we weren't actually married," he began slowly. "And it also goes without saying that we… acted differently on that mission than we usually did, in the field or in the office."

He was doing his best to give a very diplomatic answer, and it made her wonder. She was watching him carefully, not sure why his answer was suddenly so important to her. It wouldn't change things between them now, of course. So why did she suddenly feel like she couldn't breathe until he finished talking?

He looked at her thoughtfully. "I guess, when I look back now, I didn't understand how I felt about you. That mission was… it was an excuse to be close to you. And just as I had suspected I would, I definitely didn't hate that I got to stand so close to you. That I got to do things like this." He put his hands on her forearms, then moved them slowly upwards to her shoulders, then across until they met behind her neck.

"How _did_ you feel about me?" she asked before she could stop herself. He looked down and chuckled, shaking his head.

 _Yeah, Weller, how_ _ **did**_ _you feel about her?_ the voice in his head asked in amusement.

Looking back up at her steadily, he replied without hesitation. "I loved you before I even understood what love felt like," he told her. "So I did a pretty bad job of it along the way, because I had no idea what I was doing."

This was far more of an intense response that she'd expected, and she wasn't sure what to say.

But Kurt wasn't done. "From the time I was ten, I had a cloud over me. All I could ever think about was how to save people, to make up for Taylor… There was no room for anything else." He paused, bringing his hands down from her neck to hold hers. She squeezed them, smiling at him and feeling tears forming in her eyes.

"Even when I was with Allie, I…" He smiled, remembering that day at Rich Dotcom's once more. "It's like I told you that day, when we were dancing," he paused just long enough for them both to picture that day, to picture the two of them dancing close together, the nervous energy between them balanced by the feeling that it was exactly where they were supposed to be. "Allie and I were never very good at communicating." She nodded. There were plenty of times that she'd been jealous of Allie, but he'd just told her that he'd loved _her_ , Jane, a long time ago, in a way that he'd never loved anyone else… so she didn't really care that he mentioned his ex. Besides, she was there, snuggled against him, and Allie was not. "You were always the exception. In every way. It never seemed like the kind of thing I should say, because… we were sort of working together…"

"I think I knew," she replied quietly. "Without knowing… which, I know, doesn't make any sense…"

He chuckled, nodding and looking away from her. "I guess that's what made everything hurt so much more when…"

His eyes closed for a second, and she squeezed his hands in hers, lifting them up slightly and letting her head fall down, so that her forehead rested against their hands, which were intertwined. He wiggled his thumbs free, moving them lightly against the skin on her temples. Now they were both near tears, and for a minute they just stayed still where they were, breathing in and out, then he tugged their hands back down to her lap.

"I didn't know _what_ it was, Jane," he said softly, circling back to her original question. "But it wasn't just an act. I don't know where the line was… or which side of it I was on. But I do know that I was glad that I was there with _you_. Does that answer your question?" Despite how close they'd both been to emotional overload a few minutes before, he was smiling at her now, and she was smiling back.

"Yeah," she whispered. After a few seconds she chuckled, and added, "That is definitely _not_ what I was expecting you to say."

He laughed along with her. "I figured. But it's the truth." She leaned her head back down against him, and he pulled his arm tightly around her shoulders

 _How does he do that?_ she asked herself. It was something she'd been trying to figure out for a while now – how he seemed to slowly be breaking down every one of the walls she'd constructed, both those she'd built around herself consciously, and those that had sprung up against her will.

Of course, she _knew_ that he wasn't perfect – there was far too much in their history for her to have allusions about that. She was pretty sure that she'd seen all of his flaws at one point or another, just as he had seen every one of hers. Despite this, it was still inconceivable to her that she deserved something this good in her life, but he had been unfailingly adamant that she did. Slowly, she'd allowed herself to begin to believe it.

After all the time that they'd spent hiding things from each other, the feeling of having nothing to hide – of not _wanting_ to hide anything from him – made her feel slightly giddy when she looked up at him. This was _better_ that those dreams she'd been having not that long ago, the ones that made her ache with the loss of them when she had woken up alone. The best part was, it wasn't a dream. This was _real_.

Glancing back at the TV, she chuckled when she remembered what he'd said when he sat down. "So you think I could win American Ninja Warrior, huh?" she asked, grinning. "Should I give up my promising career in law enforcement to do that professionally?" Her eyes twinkled with laughter as she looked up at him, their faces only a few inches apart. She looked thoughtful, as if giving it serious consideration. "I wonder what the job prospects are… I mean, there's not a lot of call for ninjas these days…"

"Not _that you know of_ ,"he corrected her with a grin.

Of course, Jane didn't technically have a career in law enforcement, not _exactly_. They didn't know what her future with the FBI was, only that she was an asset to them, and they hoped that she would continue to be one. Of course, past experience had already proven that even being as asset wasn't necessarily enough to keep her there, something that hung unsaid in the air just then. She'd been kicked out before. But for the time being, they refused to think that way. Not until there was a reason to do so, if such a reason ever materialized again.

He grinned back at her, wondering how he ever could have felt anything _but_ love, admiration and respect for this woman. In theory, he remembered all the things that he come between them in their past, but in another way, it seemed like those things had happened to someone else. A lesser copy of each of them. _This_ was the only thing that was real, after all. Wasn't it?

"Maybe just keep that as a back-up career," he suggested helpfully. "Besides, if you were a Ninja Warrior, I wouldn't have the pleasure of your company around the office and in the field every day." Staring into her eyes, it was easy to be mesmerized – especially when she was looking at him the way she was now.

She nodded thoughtfully, as if deep in thought. "That's true," she agreed, nodding slowly. "So now that I have a back-up career plan," she said, a sly grin spreading across her face, "what I really want to know is, what happens…" she paused, then leaned slowly forward and tipped her face upward, closing the space between them. Without a second thought, he tilted his face down in response, so that their noses touched gently, making them both smile. There was a flutter of nervous excitement in her stomach, as if dozens of happy butterflies had suddenly moved in. "…if I kiss my boss?" Staring into his eyes, she suddenly hesitated.

"Only good things," he whispered, his right hand having found its way to her neck, where his fingers were now moving across the skin there so lightly that she just barely felt it. Suddenly her hesitation vanished, and her smile intensified as she leaned forward to kiss him, slowly, trying to soak in every detail.

There had been so many times when he'd wanted to kiss her since they'd gotten back on good terms with each other, but at that moment he was glad that he hadn't, that he had waited for it to be up to her. Not only for her sake, but because that moment, despite the cheesy TV show that still played in the background, could not have been more perfect.

When they finally broke apart, air having become a necessity, he swore the smile on her face was the biggest he'd ever seen. She looked at him self-consciously, tilting her head down so that her forehead was suddenly in front of his face, and he kissed it gently, then pulled his arms securely around her. He could never have put what he was feeling into words, if he'd tried for the rest of his life. Luckily, there was no need. They'd always been able to read the other's thoughts, after all.

They stayed that way, as close together as they could get, for so long that they lost track of time. Eventually he looked down and saw their mugs of tea, untouched on the coffee table, and by that point undoubtedly cold. When he chuckled, she shifted against him and tried to see what he was laughing at.

"What's so funny?" she asked, nuzzling against his neck.

"Just thinking that our tea is probably cold by now," he said, chuckling again and leaning his cheek against the top of her head.

She nodded, now smiling along with him, and replied, "I think we had something better than tea." Nodding against her, he turned his head so that he could kiss the top of hers. He saw a yawn escape from her, and he smiled fondly.

"You're getting sleepy," he observed, to which she shook her head stubbornly. _Apparently, old habits die hard,_ he thought, _even if they're technically not very old_. "You _are_ ," he said firmly. He laid his right hand softly against her cheek – the one that was farther from him – then pressed gently to bring her face towards him. When her cheek bumped against his face, he laid a kiss on it, then pressed his forehead against it as well, inhaling deeply.

"You are impossible, and I love you," he told her softly. Caught off guard, she turned and looked at him for a few seconds, her eyes wide, as if she was searching his face for something. "You're going to tell me you didn't know? And after all that talk about the Rich Dotcom mission?" he added, raising his eyebrows at her.

"I…" she shook her head. "I guess I did _and_ I didn't. I think I was… afraid to believe it."

He removed his hand from her cheek and reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, nodding as he watched her intently. He could easily understand that, knowing her as he did, and considering everything that had happened between them.

"All I knew for sure, that I _know_ for sure," she paused, glancing down for a second and then back up again, "is that _I_ love _you_."

"Just another thing we have in common, I guess," he replied. As if on cue, she yawned again. She'd been sleeping better lately, but nightmares weren't unheard of, whether he was there or not. Still, he'd noticed that she was slowly less and less resistant to the idea of sleep, at least when he was there. After all, it was just another reason for him to stay close to her – as if he needed one.

"Alright, let's go," he told her. "Bedtime." She smiled up at him hopefully, to which he responded by leaning down to kiss her once again. "Does that answer your question?" he asked when they finally broke apart again.

"Very funny," she replied with a grin. "And… yes. It does."

"Good," he replied, "because I meant it."

She grinned at him crookedly, shaking her head and thinking that life was funny… after how desperately she had once wanted a past, she now had something even better – a future. Best of all, after thinking that she had lost him completely, for good, because of mistakes that she'd made that could never be forgiven, somehow it seemed that a future that was even better than anything she could have imagined for herself was now hers – no, _theirs_.

As she continued to stare at him with increasing intensity, he wondered where her thoughts had wandered. "You with me, Jane?" he asked.

Suddenly she focused on him once again and smiled broadly, leaning forward until their noses touched. "Yes, please," she whispered, as if he'd offered her something. He couldn't help but smile, because in a way he supposed that he had. They'd both been through Hell to get to where they were, but that just made it that much better now. Besides, whatever obstacles remained in their future, they simply couldn't be worse than what was in their past. Of that much he was certain.

"Then come on," he said, planting a quick kiss on her lips and then standing up, holding out a hand to her. She took it, of course, looking around the dull room as he pulled her up as if seeing it for the first time.

"I think we need to pick up a few things tomorrow," she told him absently, following him toward the stairs and then stopping to look back at the bare walls. His eyes followed hers, and he knew without being told where her mind had gone. In a way, this simple statement made him just as happy as everything else that had happened. She had gone so long without personalizing the safe house at all this time around, and he knew that it was because she was afraid to get too comfortable, afraid that it would all be taken away again. If she was treating this place like a home, then that meant that she had hope for the future.

It had been a long time since she'd been the Jane that he'd first fallen in love with, without even knowing it, and the glint in her eyes just then reminded him of _that_ Jane, before so many things had damaged her. She wasn't that Jane any longer, of course… but she was slowly figuring out who she _was_.

"Anything you want," he told her, stopping where she had stopped midway to the stairs, and pulling her close. She looked back at him and saw that look again, the one that was now threatening to melt her heart – the one that he had always reserved just for her. And simply because she couldn't resist, and also because there was no reason _to_ resist any longer, she kissed him. It wasn't the first time, and yet somehow, it almost felt like it was… but it certainly wouldn't be the last.


	7. Denial, Blame, Forgiveness

**Disclaimer: I do not own Blindspot. I only** _ **wish**_ **I owned Blindspot. More like it's the other way around… I've come to realize that THEY own ME. :) (The … indicate The Script song lyrics, which I also DO NOT own. I'm nowhere near talented enough)**

 _A/N: Thanks to everyone who took the time to read and review this story. This time it IS the last chapter… It's even longer than the previous one was before I split it, but it's all one section and I just gave it and let it be ridiculously long. So gather provisions before you start, if necessary… I hope you like it. :)_

 _ **The first time he saw what the CIA had done to her, it happened completely by accident.**_

It was a Saturday, and Jane was having a somewhat lazy morning at home. Kurt had told her that he'd be back at some point, though they hadn't said a specific time. While it was only barely 10:00 am, it had only been a few hours since she'd last seen him. Despite how decidedly _not_ innocent she knew that it would have sounded if she had told anyone that he had stayed over at her place the night before, _again_ , as he had most nights recently, the reality was quite the opposite.

While most people would probably describe the pace with which things were moving between them as somewhere between _glacial_ and _traffic jam_ , to them it was perfect. Really, Kurt was fine with whatever Jane wanted, and Jane was, after everything she'd been through, understandably… _cautious_. No, cautious didn't cover it, but it was the right idea. So far he'd slept beside her numerous times and held her close to him almost as many times – which had started after she'd had a nightmare but was no longer _limited_ to those instances – and there had been some kissing, but so far, that was it. The _only_ thing he cared about was that she was comfortable and happy. Whatever had been done or not done, and said or not said between them, he _knew_ that she loved him. The things that she dealt with weren't like what anyone else ever had or ever would, so their relationship didn't have to be like anyone else's. To him, it all made sense.

He also knew that it wasn't _just_ Jane, that he had enough issues of his own. The two of them reminded him of a quote he'd heard somewhere once, long ago, though he had no idea where, or why on Earth he remembered it. Something from Jane Austen, he was pretty sure.

" _Perhaps it is our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another."_

He was not at all a sentimental guy. He'd never had anything about which to _be_ sentimental. However, this quote had surfaced again in his mind not too long ago, and now he couldn't help but think of it sometimes when he looked at her. It seemed to sum things up perfectly.

She had fewer nightmares lately, which she attributed to his presence, though she still had them often enough that since the night she had called him to come over the first time, he'd been there more nights than he _hadn't_ been there.

After a few of those phone calls, he'd just decided it made more sense if he stayed there from the _beginning_ of the night. "If nothing else," he'd insisted at first, "that way you don't have to call me, and wait for me to get here, and I don't have to drive across town when I'm half asleep. It's just me being selfish, really." He'd said it with a grin, and she had rolled her eyes, but smiled right back at him. Really, she had no desire to argue with him, and she felt _much_ safer when he was there.

Of course she didn't want him to feel like he _had_ to be there, but he'd assured her that was not the case. On the contrary, he had said, "I'd rather be with you than not with you, so if I need an excuse, then not driving over in the middle of the night is my excuse." And since _she_ also preferred to be with him than not with him, though she didn't actually say it in so many words, she stopped any pretense of telling him that she didn't need him there. Things were just _better_ when he was there, after all.

This morning he'd gone out to run a few errands, one of which included going back to his recently much neglected apartment, so he had said that he would get those few tasks out of the way and then be back.

 _As soon as I can_.

The words echoed pleasantly in her head, and a smile seemed to be stuck on her face. She'd be seeing Kurt again soon, and that was all she needed to be in a good mood just then.

It was an unseasonably warm day for what was usually a cool time of year, and Jane was wearing jeans and a tank top – the outfit that had once been her favorite. Even covered in tattoos, she'd found herself dressed that way, usually only varying the color of her tank top, more often than not. Sometimes had added a jacket if she was going anywhere besides the FBI building, but that was about it. Since the end of her three months with the CIA, however, her preferred style had changed, for a very specific reason. If they had noticed that she now kept as much of herself covered as possible, the others had not mentioned it.

 _They have to know_ , she often thought. _And of course it's no surprise that they don't bring it up. Why would they? It's uncomfortable for all of us._ Just the fact of her CIA imprisonment was a source of great awkwardness within the team. As far as they'd all come past it, that topic wasn't something that any of them touched with a ten foot pole if they could possibly avoid it. She understood the team's hesitation to go anywhere near the subject, of course, and she had accepted that however angry she had been with them for it all, they had not known _everything._ If they had known what had _actually_ been happening to her beyond just that the CIA had "taken her into custody," things may have happened differently. Never mind that they should have known what "CIA custody" entailed. If she had dwelled on that, they would never have moved forward.

At least, she chose to tell herself that things could have been different, because if she didn't, there was no way she could ever trust them again. And as much as she didn't _want_ to at first, and didn't care whether they trusted her or not, she _needed_ to trust them again – she needed to trust _him_ again – if she wanted to take down Sandstorm, just like she needed them – but especially _him –_ to trust her. And then, slowly, it wasn't about Sandstorm anymore. She just needed them – especially him – to trust each other. And then, again very slowly and almost against her will, she just needed him, as she had a long time ago. It seemed that they had come full circle.

When she'd first come back and the weather had been warmer, everyone had been so busy glaring at her, _hating_ her, they hadn't really _looked at_ her. She was fairly sure that no one had taken any notice of what she was wearing. Now the weather was cooling off, and it made more sense to wear long sleeves anyway. This suited her just fine. Considering the scars left on her body from the torture she'd endured at the hands of Keaton and his goons, she wasn't sure she'd ever wear anything but long sleeves in public again. When she thought back now to the part of her life as Jane where her _tattoos_ had made her self-conscious… Well, horribly scarred tattoos were a whole new layer of uncomfortable to look at, and she almost longed for the days when she had _only_ had her tattoos to feel self-conscious about. She could only hope that eventually, they would heal, and that she would again look the way she had before.

All of this not withstanding, that day Jane had been in a good mood simply because the weather was nice and she had a day off of work filled with Kurt's company to look forward to. The TV was on, but she wasn't really watching whatever the show was that was on at the moment – it wasn't _American Ninja Warrior_ , so she wasn't interested, anyway – it was just on for background noise while she was moving around the house. She'd been cleaning for a while, and then she'd sat down with her sketchbook, and now she hummed along with the tune of the commercial as she worked on her current drawing.

When she heard a knock on her door, she looked up in surprise. _He's back already?_ She thought of nothing except the fact that she was excited to see him, and completely forgot that she hadn't put on the long sleeved shirt that lay at one end of the couch, ready to hide the scars that riddled her arms, back and abdomen. Her tank top hid some, but far from all of them. While she knew that it was only a matter of time before he saw them, if they were to continue getting closer, she hadn't consciously decided how she would handle that.

Thinking only that her day had just gotten even better, she stood up and walked to the door. Things had been going so well for them, and she had finally stopped being terrified of her own happiness, stopped expecting everything between them to disappear as soon as she got used to it. She was still cautious, but for the first time, overall, she was… _happy_. She liked this feeling, and it was because of him.

She opened the door for him, and for the first few seconds, his grin matched hers. It always seemed to be this way lately – every time they saw each other, they both looked giddy, as if it had been weeks, months even, since they'd seen each other. He was poised to say something in greeting, when she noticed that he was suddenly distracted. Whatever he'd been about to say, the words seemed to die on his lips as she watched in confusion.

Still, she stepped back to let him in, despite a rapidly growing unsettled feeling in the pit of her stomach. "Hey, you're back early," she said as he moved inside quickly, looking more and more alarmed.

 _What is he looking at?_ she wondered with increasing concern. That was when she realized that he was looking at _her_ , and that she wasn't wearing the long sleeved shirt that she had meant to put on before he arrived. In her haste to open the door, she had completely forgotten. Now it all rushed back to her: the fact that since she had purposely worn long sleeves around everyone, him included, for the last few months, this was the first time he'd seen her this exposed in a very long time.

Was it silly to feel self-conscious, almost naked, around him while she was still technically, completely clothed? Some might say yes, especially since he'd spent so many hours studying pictures of her in which she was _actually_ completely naked. And yet, she did.

 _He was going to see them eventually, wasn't he? The way things have been going between the two of you?_ her mind demanded as she scrambled to think of a way to stop the panic she felt increasing exponentially every second inside her. That thought, while logical, didn't stop her mind from spinning out of control, however.

His hand moved slowly to what was left of a particularly wide and gruesome looking gash in her left upper arm, just below her shoulder, and by the time he touched the skin there, he looked genuinely horrified.

"Jane," he whispered, but no other words came out.

 _Damn damn damn!_ she screamed in her head. _I didn't want him to see any of that. I didn't want him to see_ _ **me**_ _like that._ Again, the fact that it had been logically inevitable didn't make her feel any better. Not even a tiny bit.

She turned, no longer looking at him, to try to walk away, to reach where she'd left her shirt on the other side of the room, or at the very least to not be standing in front of him, having to watch the horror and revulsion in his face, but he stepped in front of her, setting his hands gently on her shoulders, looking down at her in, she saw when she finally looked up at him again, anguish.

"Jane," he said again, and once again, he could say nothing else. He had no words as he looked at the skin that was now visible around her tank top that was normally covered by her less revealing long sleeved shirts. It was only now that he realized that he hadn't seen her in less than long sleeves and pants since she'd been back, since she'd been held by the CIA, with the exception of that hospital gown which covered _almost_ as much…

 _What did you_ _ **think**_ _happened to her in that black site?_ his mind demanded. She'd told them that she had been tortured, and the FBI doctors had confirmed this. He'd even skimmed her file after the doctor's report had been added… The only way he could _not_ have known about this was because he willfully refused to acknowledge it. And now, here was the evidence in front of his eyes… the consequences of _his_ actions. He wondered if he was going to be sick, and silently begged himself not to be. That would definitely _not_ help Jane's ego, even if it was himself that he was nauseated by just then, not her.

His fingers were moving from the first gash he'd seen, on to the next badly healed wound, and then the next and the next, as if he was connecting a twisted set of dots. She wanted to stop him, or better still, wanted to scroll back time and put her other shirt on before she'd gone to the door. Closing her eyes, she willed it all to stop, willed _him_ to stop… willed herself not to be there at all, while she was at it… but no words came out.

Instead, suddenly she saw Keaton and the other men who'd been with him, heard their voices in her ears, smelled the stench of their breath in her face and of the dungeon she'd been held in, and worst of all, felt the blows that had given her those scars in the first place – those scars and some other, even _more_ painful ones that were still hidden beneath her tank top. Her eyes squeezed shut on their own, as she suddenly tried to retreat inside her mind, as she had done so often at the black site.

 _No…. no no no no no no no no no…_ Suddenly it was the only word she could form, though it was still only in her head.

Though she _knew_ that it was all in her mind, that she wasn't there any longer, that it was Kurt standing in front of her and that he would _never_ hurt her, she suddenly couldn't convince herself of that fact. Without opening her eyes, she began backing away from him, losing all sense of where she was or what was around her, and almost immediately tripping backwards as she bumped into the corner of the wall where it turned and opened into the living room. This only made the panic she felt that much worse, as her arms flailed out behind her and she stumbled, falling to the ground and then blindly scrambling to get away. She didn't know what she was doing or where she was going, and even when she opened her eyes, it was as though she didn't see her actual surroundings – her safe house – she saw only the dungeon of the black site where she'd been tortured for months.

That was when she started screaming and struggling against him. He'd attempted to catch her before she'd fallen, realizing too late what was happening. He'd been too caught up in his shock over the marks on her skin and what they meant. Now she was on the floor, struggling to get away from him as if her life depended on it, and all he knew was that he just had to somehow get through to her before she hurt herself. He scrambled after her, calling her name, before realizing that restraining her would be a bad idea. Not only could she probably get away if he tried to hold her, and kick his ass in the process, but she wasn't in her right mind right now, and whatever she _thought_ was happening too her, she was reliving what she'd been through.

It was the first time this had ever happened when she was awake. She'd had _nightmares_ about Keaton and the CIA for months afterwards on an almost nightly basis, and sometimes she still did even now, but she'd never slipped back to that place while she was _awake._ Her mind was split between needing to get away at all costs and being conscious of the fact that what she was seeing was not actually happening to her. She wondered fleetingly if she was losing her mind.

Suddenly the hands that had been trying to catch her were gone, and as she stopped fighting, simply stopping, frozen in place and trying to catch her breath, the rest of it faded as well. Before she knew it, she was back in her safe house, crouched on the floor, hearing Kurt calling her name somewhere in the distance. She was gulping for air so hard that she was almost choking, and there were tears pouring down her cheeks. Curling herself into a tight ball, she shook her head against it all. She felt utterly powerless, and what had just happened had been terrifying.

 _I can't_ , she thought simply. No other words would come.

It had taken all of his willpower to back off, away from her, when he could see what was happening, but it had been the right call. She'd started to come back to the present, as if whatever had just happened in her mind was suddenly fading and she sensed that she was back in her actual surroundings. He'd seen the difference in her eyes when she'd regained consciousness, before she'd squeezed them tightly shut again. And then, just like that, she'd curled herself into a ball, eyes closed, cutting herself off from everything.

His heart ached for her, possibly more now than ever before – though there had been so many times when he had felt for her so desperately, it was impossible to be sure. For some reason, for Jane it always seemed to be one step forward and five steps back. Unable to watch her suffer like this any longer, and _fairly_ sure that she was no longer hallucinating about being back at the black site, he was now officially done keeping his distance from her. After all, contact had always been the way he had calmed her down, and that was the thing she needed most just then. Moving towards her steadily – though not _too_ fast, lest she open her eyes and find him threatening again, for whatever reason – he reached her side in seconds.

"Jane," he said once again. Her name was still the only word he uttered since he'd arrived. "Jane… I'm sorry." He stroked her hair gently a few times, watching as the tension that had electrified her a moment before seemed to simply flow out of her, leaving her limp and helpless. Her body now shook violently, racked with her sobs. It was killing him to see her like this, and suddenly he knew what he had to do.

She'd rolled herself into such a tight ball, it was easy for him to reach all the way around her. Before he did any more than put his arms around her, however, he leaned down to first whisper in her ear. "Jane, it's me. It's Kurt. You're okay. I'm going to lift you up now, okay?" He leaned his forehead against the side of her head, just above her ear, for a few seconds, willing her to breathe, to stay with him. Then, gathering his strength and hoping that she had heard him, and that she wasn't going to panic, he slowly began lifting the small bundle that Jane had molded herself into, managing to somehow get to his feet and moving slowly and carefully towards the couch.

Once there, he held onto her as he sat down slowly and carefully, letting her fall into his lap while keeping a firm, but not tight, hold around her. He pulled the beige blanket from the end of the couch over her, thinking that its soft texture might be soothing. After all, it was the opposite of whatever she was flashing back to. She was still crying, eyes shut tightly, and hadn't said a word, but she wasn't struggling against him, which was a good start. He reached for the TV remote and hit the 'Off' button, opting for quiet rather than the noise of whatever had just come on.

"Ssshhhh," he murmured soothingly, kissing her forehead. "Come back to me, Jane." He put one hand on the back of her neck, one of the few places that he knew was safe to touch without triggering anything, moving his thumb back and forth slowly, simply focusing on listening to her breathing in and out, rocking her slightly in his lap.

She was slowly calming down, he could tell. Her breathing had slowed down _almost_ to normal, and her hands were no longer clenched in fists, but had instead slowly wound around her middle, as if she was bracing herself for blows from an invisible enemy. Seeing her like this only made him hold her closer.

Her cheek leaned against his chest, the top of her head tucked under his chin, and the last thing she wanted to do was to move. _Just listen to his heartbeat,_ she told herself, focusing on that and nothing else for quite a while. As she calmed down, her thoughts began to stray to what had just happened. She knew that they were going to need to deal with this, to talk about it. Even if she put on her long sleeved shirt now, it couldn't make him un-see anything. Besides, as she'd told herself before, as close as they had gotten, it had only been a matter of time.

Somehow, it never occurred to her that he would be far more concerned with the fact that she'd been hallucinating about being back at the black site than he was about the scars on her skin. In her mind, she assumed that he would find them – _her_ – grotesque. It never occurred to her that what might horrify him was not the way her torture had scarred her, but that she had been tortured at all.

After allowing herself another ten minutes or so of sitting quietly with him under the blanket, listening to his heartbeat, she forced herself to pick up her head and sit back slightly to look at him. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "For… freaking out."

He shook his head at her in what appeared to be disbelief. "Jane, don't… you don't have to _apologize_ for that. After everything you've been through… I just…" He had trouble getting the words to come out, but he pressed forward. "All I care about is that you're okay."

She smiled, though it was forced, and looked down as she nodded. "I know," she replied, feeling her eyes grow suspiciously damp.

"I didn't… I mean, I should have…" He couldn't form another sentence. He'd never in his life felt so remorseful, so guilty... No, that was wrong. It was exactly how he'd felt about Taylor's disappearance, and then again when he'd found out about her murder at the hands of his own father… The pain in his heart was suddenly overwhelming.

 _Oh, God,_ he thought as the emotions that he'd been suppressing for so long flooded back and threatened to incapacitate him. _How have I made so many bad decisions when it comes to Jane? How do I seem to manage to always fail the people who mean the most to me?_

The sorrowful look on his face was painful for her to look at as he looked away from her. It was clear that he was torturing _himself_ now.

 _I wanted him to feel guilty,_ she remembered vaguely. _When they brought me in, I wanted them all to feel guilty for what they had let the CIA do to me… But not anymore…_ There was still one thing she simply could _not_ understand. _How did he not_ _ **know**_ _about all this?_ she wondered. _The FBI doctors saw everything, it must have been in the report._

 _He was too busy hating you_ , her mind whispered in reply. This thought would have crushed her earlier, but now she had already moved beyond this fact. It didn't matter anymore. The only thing that mattered was right now.

"Kurt," she whispered breathlessly, "I _am_ … okay, I mean… Or I… want to be…" She inhaled a shaky breath, trying to steady herself, but feeling anything but steady. Exhaling and feeling herself shake just as much, her face contorted in frustration. When she spoke again, it was with great effort as her voice broke, but she pushed the words out anyway. "I just want it all to be _over_ … but it feels like it's _never_ going to be over." Tears fell down her cheeks again, and she leaned her head against him, defeated.

If he could have done only one thing in the world, it would be to lift this burden that she still carried after all this time. _All of it_. He had thought that she was doing so much better, and now he was afraid that he'd just set her back to the beginning again. Why life had decided to dump so much on one person, he couldn't understand.

 _That's interesting, coming from you,_ he thought. He realized the irony then, because a hell of a lot had been dumped on him in his life, too, and yet all he could think about was _her_. He pulled her just a little tighter, running his hands gently over her hair. "It's over, Jane, I promise," he whispered.

Nodding quickly as her eyes closed, she concentrated only on the sensation of Kurt's hand, of this other arm around her, and of the soft fabric of the blanket that covered the two of them. He was the opposite of what she'd been reliving, after all. While Keaton had used every means available to him to inflict pain on her, both mental and physical, Kurt would never do anything to hurt her. She _knew_ that. She just had to focus on it.

After nearly an hour like that, he thought that she might be asleep. He was perfectly content where he was, so time was irrelevant for the moment. He had nowhere else that he needed to be, unless of course work called, which it had done far less during the off hours since Sandstorm had been taken down. What was even more important, there was nowhere else that he _wanted_ to be – nowhere but there with Jane.

Finally, she sat up and leaned back again, her resolve strengthening. "I'm sorry that I didn't say anything," she began, but he was already shaking his head. "I thought you knew."

"No," he said. "I knew where you'd been. I didn't…" Now it was his turn to look away, his expression pained. "I couldn't… I guess I just couldn't let myself believe it." The last words barely came out. It hurt to know that he'd known that this had happened to her, but that he had chosen to ignore it because he hadn't been confronted with the reality directly. They all _knew_ that she'd been held in a black site. They hadn't known at the time, maybe, but they'd certainly known since they got her back. What had happened to her there should have been easy to guess. He simply hadn't allowed himself to focus on that part…

 _I could have at least read her file carefully_ , he thought miserably. _I could have_ _ **asked**_ _her… I just assumed… I don't even know_ _ **what**_ _I assumed... That she looked fine to me, so she was fine?_

"It's not your fault," she whispered, but he just shook his head.

"I should have…" he began slowly, but there was no way she was letting him go down _that_ road. After all, how many things were there that they both should have done along the way? If they started thinking that way, they would never stop.

"Maybe," she replied matter-of-factly, cutting him off. He looked up at her in surprise, because it was not what he'd expected her to say. "But think about all the things we _should have_ done since we met. We can't go there, can't do that to ourselves. It's just… there's way too many of them. We're _here_ now, not there. We just have to… let those things go." She paused, watching him carefully and hoping that logic would prevail. "Okay?"

He digested her words slowly. Though it was hard to swallow, he knew that it was the truth. There were far too many things that they both regretted saying and doing, enough to build a mountain that would tumble over and crush what they had managed to salvage. No, she was right, they couldn't do that. Not if they wanted to keep what they had carefully rebuilt between them – and he wanted _that_ more than anything.

He looked back at her then, his expression pained. "Did you at least… I assume that the doctor… treated you for… them, somehow? When you… got back?" Every one of those words felt wrong coming out of his mouth, like he had no right say them to her somehow, after waiting so long. But he had to know.

She nodded, watching the anguish on his face. "Yes, they kept me under observation for a while, when everything was… fresh… to make sure they didn't get infected. I still have some cream for the bad ones…" She shrugged as if it didn't matter. "But I can't…" Realizing what she was saying and what his reply would be, she stopped mid-sentence, shrugging again and looking away.

 _Dammit_ , she thought.

"But you can't reach them all," he finished for her, and he actually felt her wince at his words. She obviously knew _exactly_ what came next, after all, and she was shaking her head before he'd opened his mouth to speak. "Don't argue with me, Jane," he said seriously, despite the fact that she hadn't said a word to argue with him. They both knew the other's thoughts, so they'd simply skipped saying them out loud. "Because I'm going to, and you know it." Then, his voice softening, he said, "I owe you at least that much." Again, she just shook her head, closing her eyes for a second before looking back at him.

"You don't owe me anything," she replied, her own voice only coming out in a whisper.

"We'll just have to agree to disagree on that one," he said, his mouth curving into a sad smile. Then, after a pause, his face changed and he tried without success to convey what he was thinking. "I mean, I know that it's… I just wish that I'd realized… That…" He wished that he hadn't been so stupid. That she'd said something to him, even though there was no reason in the world why she should have had to. He shook his head and gave up trying to express his thoughts for the moment.

Sighing, she looked down at the front of his shirt, unable to meet his eyes. "Even if I'd realized that you didn't know, it's not really something that comes up in conversation. You know, 'Hey, so you know how the CIA tortured me? Well, it's really, really, gross, you should take a look.'" She paused and looked up at him with a sad smile, then added, "I didn't want you to see me like that. You haven't even seen the _bad_ part. It's… pretty gruesome." She shuddered just thinking about it.

Now it was his turn to inhale a slow, shaky breath. "Jane, I…" He was still having trouble finding the words. _Any_ words, really. "I don't care about that. You _know_ that, don't you? I only care about _you_. That you're okay. The _only_ thing that horrifies me is the idea that anyone could hurt you like that."

She just stared down at his shirt for a few more seconds, wanting to believe him, and yet… When she finally forced herself to look up into his eyes, however, she felt herself stabilize. _Yes, she knew it._ She wanted to tell him that she did know, but words failed her. And then, as much as she desperately wanted to believe it… could she?

 _There's only one way to be sure,_ the voice in her head told her.

Without another word, she scooted herself slightly away from him, moving with some effort, with both how far she'd been leaning _into_ him and the angle of the couch working against her. She moved the blanket off of her and scooted forward, so that when she finally stopped moving, she was sitting at the edge of his lap, facing away from him, perched on his knees with her feet on the floor. She looked back at him over her shoulder, making eye contact with him and holding it for what felt like a long time before finally looking away. In that time that they looked at each other, everything and nothing passed between them, like a long, deep conversation between people who knew each other so well that no words were even necessary for understanding… because that was exactly what it was, what _they_ were.

"Jane," he said quietly, putting his hands lightly on her hips, touching the bottom edge of her tank top ever so slightly with his thumbs. Somehow he was almost certain he knew what she was about to do.

"You don't have to do that," he told her, shaking his head.

"I know," she whispered, but didn't stop moving.

Turning back to face away from him, she crossed her forearms over each other as she grasped the bottom edge of her tank top, pausing for a few seconds to ask herself if she was _sure_ that she wanted to do this.

 _No,_ she thought, _I don't. But it's important… and it's_ _ **Kurt**_. She couldn't have explained _why_ that made it okay to do something that she never would have done voluntarily in front of anyone else, she only knew that it was important for him to see her scars. Without allowing herself another second of hesitation, she pulled her tank top over her head, holding her breath for what came next, her hands clasped anxiously in front of her.

He gasped slightly, without meaning to, before he caught himself. He'd somehow known what she was doing when she'd looked over her shoulder at him, and he could read in her eyes exactly how much she didn't want to do it. Never in a million years would he have insisted, or even _asked_ her to do that. On the contrary, he'd meant it when he'd told her that she didn't have to. But the fact that she now sat there in front of him completely vulnerable, solely so that he could see exactly what the CIA had done to her, only made him love her more. At the same time, he felt his heart breaking for her all over again.

 _The things that she endured because she believed that it would keep us – keep_ _ **me**_ _– safe… even when she believed that we had turned her over to the CIA willingly._ It was unfathomable.

And yes, she was sitting in front of him in only her bra. Under other circumstances, the effect would have been completely different, of course. That wasn't what this was about, however, and it was all that he could do to force himself to look at the horrific ways that her skin had been mutilated by the torture she had endured. After having spent hours staring at pictures of her tattoos in the time since he'd met her, he was dismayed to see the way that they had been disfigured, to the point that some of them were almost unrecognizable. While they had been forced on Jane without her consent by the person that she no longer was, and therefore were in one way a violation of her, at the same time, they had been like intricate works of art, something that had simply become a part of her being _Jane_. But now…

She heard a choked sob behind her, and a shiver ran down her spine. His fingertips were on her back then, just barely touching her skin, but moving across it nonetheless. She shivered again, closing her eyes as more than a few tears were pushed down her cheeks by the motion of her eyelids. She reminded herself to breathe, willing herself to remember that she was safe.

The only silver lining that she'd come up with in all the time since she'd been back was that _she_ herself didn't have to see the scars on her back, at least not as often as if they'd been on the front of her – though of course she had looked at them in the mirror on many occasions. She knew from comparing them with the ones that she _could_ see that the ones on her back were the worst. It didn't help that she couldn't reach a good portion of her back to be able to apply the cream that they'd given her when the doctor had cleared her, so they weren't healing as well as they were supposed to. Who they'd _assumed_ that task would fall to, she did not know.

While a part of her wanted to see his reaction, and a part of her was thankful that she didn't have to, and just then she couldn't bring herself to turn around. The next thing she knew, she felt his forehead against the center of her back, on the spot where she knew his name was, though it no longer looked the way it did in the pictures in her file. She knew from memory that the burns that had been inflicted on that part of her skin had made his name only partially legible.

Somehow he had been able to look at the mass of scars that covered her back for several minutes, taking in every detail in horror. Though he had desperately wanted to look away, he had found that he couldn't – not before he had studied every inch of every scar. After all, he had looked away for long enough. All of the wounds were at least partially healed, though some of them looked like they must still be very painful. There were burns of many different shapes and sizes, wide gashes, huge areas that were _still_ discolored, even months later… These discolorations were completely unlike the colored ink used in her tattoos, and were obviously severe bruises, possibly the remains of internal bleeding. There were also many, many narrow lines that looked as though they had once been incisions… and then a sickening number of marks that he couldn't identify. He felt bile rising in his throat as he thought of the circumstances under which all of those marks had ended up there, and he felt a sharp pain in his chest.

 _I allowed this to happen. Through my inaction, I allowed this to happen_ , he thought over and over.

He closed his eyes, unable to look at the damage that had been done to her for another second. Not because he was disgusted with her, but because it physically hurt him to imagine that one human being could do that to another human being, especially to someone that he cared about so deeply.

His head fell forward against her back, just happening to land against what was left of his name. He was struggling to breathe normally, but failing. His hands still sat on her hips, and as his head leaned against her back, he slowly wound his arms around her waist, pulling her closer to him without even a thought about what he was doing. He simply needed her closer, to reassure himself that she was there in front of him, and that he wasn't just staring at pictures of what had happened to her. That she was still _alive_ , because how could _anyone_ survive something like that?

 _Breathe in, breathe out,_ he reminded himself. _Breathe in, Breathe out._ And then, the only other word his mind could form just then… _Jane…_

The pain he felt inside of him reminded him of when he'd found Taylor's remains – that was how sharply it cut through him… except this time, he had no one else to blame. This time, it was _his_ fault.

Now that he was closer to her, his head now pressed into her hair, she could feel him shaking. She'd been holding her shirt balled up in her lap, and though she didn't hate the feel of him holding onto her against her bare skin, Kurt had clearly reached his breaking point. She almost felt guilty for springing so much on him at once, but there was really no gradual or gentle way she could have done it. What had been done to her was horrific, and there was no way around it. No matter what the circumstances, his reaction would have been the same.

So now she spread her shirt back out on her lap, then lifted it carefully, trying to work around the tight hold he had on her. She slipped the tank top back over her head, moving gently just a fraction of an inch away from him so that she could tug the fabric between them, and then pulled it down to where it was supposed to sit, covering at least some of her scars once more. At least the worst ones.

"I…" she started, but she simply didn't know what to say, so she just shook her head. Kurt was still holding onto her tightly, but she managed to turn back around, sliding back down to where she had been sitting in his lap. She tried to look into his eyes, but he couldn't bring himself to look at her. For a second she felt guilty, wondering if she shouldn't have shown him, or what would be far worse, if he was now disgusted by her… Her first thought was that that was unlikely, and yet… it made her very uneasy that he wouldn't he look at her.

"I'm sorry, Jane," he said in a choked whisper then, his voice barely loud enough to hear. She looked back up at him, seeing him finally meet her eyes. In them she saw the better of the two alternatives, all things considered: guilt was better than disgust.

Tears were already in her eyes before she'd had time to think about how to react. For a long time, she had wanted nothing _more_ thanfor him to feel guilty about what had been done to her. But now? Seeing the anguish that it was causing him, she wished for anything _but_ this.

She pressed her hand against his cheek, the scruff a welcome sensation beneath her fingers. The rough texture of it made him just feel that much more real. "Don't…" she pleaded. "It's not your fault. It's… it's done. I know that you'd never…"

This Kurt Weller, the one holding onto her tightly, he would have done anything to stop this from happening to her, as would the one who she had once upon a time told that he was her starting point. The one that she had known in between… she understood why he had been angry. She understood that while he hadn't actively _wanted_ any of it to happen to her, he hadn't exactly stopped it, either. _Not_ that he'd had _all_ of the information… But holding onto the place where they'd been stuck for so long, where so many of their demons still lurked, wouldn't do either of them any good. On the contrary, it would only take away what they now had.

It was done. They couldn't go back. What was more important, they didn't _have_ to go back.

Tears were on both of their cheeks now, and they were clinging to each other fiercely, as if at any second, some force might try to pry them apart. Every once in a while one of them would start to murmur something, and the other would snuggle tighter against them. Mostly they were apologies, all of which the other refused to allow. There was no blame left between them, except what they held onto for themselves.

Eventually, she leaned back slightly and stretched. "I'll be right back," she said, pushing herself slowly to sit up.

"Hold on," he said, catching hold of her shoulders, but quickly moving his hands to her cheeks. He held onto her face while he leaned forward to kiss her. A small part of her had been afraid of how he would react to her after he'd seen what he'd seen. She knew better than to think that he would judge her for it, but at the same time… she knew exactly how gruesome it was. And as he kissed her as if she was the most precious thing in the world to him – which she _was,_ of course – she felt the doubt melt away.

Opening her eyes again, she found him looking at her fondly, and she couldn't help but smile. She tilted her forehead forward, and he took the opportunity to lean towards her and plant a kiss there, as well.

"I love you," he whispered against her forehead, and she tilted her face back up towards him, slowing almost to a stop with less than an inch between them, which made him grin with anticipation. Moving forward agonizingly slowly, as far as he was concerned, she whispered, "I love you, too," just as she leaned her lips against his, kissing him once again. A minute later she leaned back just a fraction, barely enough to be able to talk while still keeping their lips against each other, she said, "May I go to the bathroom now? I was trying to be subtle, but someone started kissing me…" He leaned back and laughed heartily in surprise, thinking that this woman could not be any more perfect if she tried.

"Only if you promise to come back," he said with a grin.

"Always," she replied sweetly, kissing him quickly once more and then pushing herself up off the couch for the first time in what she discovered, upon consulting the clock on the wall, was several hours.

When she came out of the bathroom, he wasn't on the couch. Following the small noises she heard, she tracked him to the kitchen, where she found him making two of her favorite things, coffee and grilled cheese sandwiches. She leaned against the doorway and watched him for a second, before he looked up and smiled at her. When he looked into her eyes, it was as though she was propelled forward by a magnet toward him, and before she'd even thought about it, she was trying to wiggle her way in front of him where he stood at the counter, slicing cheese.

"Hey, what're you doing?" he asked, grinning and slipping his left arm around her waist, simultaneously trying to pull her out of his way so that he could continue his work – which was harder with one hand, of course, and since he was using a knife, a little bit dangerous.

"Why, do you want me to go?" she asked, looking into his eyes innocently and pretending to be serious. The twinkle in hers betrayed her, of course.

He looked at her just as seriously, leaning closer to her and whispered simply, "Never."

Without missing a beat or looking away, she replied, "Good, because this is _my_ house." He looked at her in surprise for a second, his face breaking into a wide grin, and he leaned forward to kiss her once more. He was never, ever going to get tired of being able to do that.

"Will you _please_ take at least one step back so that I can make you something to eat? And so that neither of us ends up with an unnecessary stab wound?" he asked her patiently. "I'm hoping to only slice the _cheese_." Looking at him in surprise, not having expected to be asked to step away from him, she took his words as a challenge. Therefore, she took the requested one step, moving just far enough so that she was now standing behind him, threading her arms around his waist.

"How's this?" she asked over his shoulder, standing up on her toes to try to lean closer to his ear. He couldn't help but grin, because it was so like her to do something like that.

"No complaints," he said over his shoulder, "though I _am_ going to need to step over to the stove in a second. This may get slightly more dangerous."

"I'm ready," she replied, laying her cheek against his back, just between his shoulder blades. She felt the rumble as he chuckled, and she couldn't help but feel the glow of happiness returning to her, despite the turn the day had taken. Leaning up and standing on her tip toes to kiss the back of his neck, she hesitantly released her arms from around him.

"Just kidding," she told him, "I'll get out of your way." He grinned at her before returning his attention to the food, and she wandered out of the kitchen, back around to the living room. She walked to the small table there, where she'd left her sketchbook sitting before he'd arrived.

She'd recently started drawing again, mainly sketching her tattoos – starting her collection from scratch once again. Before, she'd had enough drawings to cover a large wall, but since they'd all been confiscated, along with everything else in her safe house, when Kurt had arrested her, she had simply started over. Though she was drawing largely the same pictures, she hadn't even thought of asking for them back. Despite the minimal differences from the ones she was now drawing, it was more what those pictures symbolized. She didn't want _anything_ from that time back. Sometimes she wondered if it would be easier to simply erase it from her memory so that she wouldn't have to remember it.

 _No,_ she reminded herself _, there are some things, even though they're painful, that we're supposed to remember. That's one of them._

The drawings were easy enough to replicate, of course, and in a way the process of doing so was soothing, so she didn't exactly _mind_ having to start all over again… She simply tried not to think about the reason that she no longer had the others. The most noticeable difference was that this time she hadn't put them up on the wall, leaving them in her sketchbook instead. That way, she could look at them when she wanted to, but she could also close the book on them – literally – when she didn't feel like having them stare at her.

At the moment she was working on a collage of a few of her tattoos all on one page, with the "Kurt Weller FBI" tattoo at the center and others arranged around it, overlapping each other. The biggest difference between the tattoos as she was drawing them now and how she had done before was that she was drawing them the way they looked _now_ , the lines marred and broken by the abuse her skin had suffered. Nearly all of them had been changed in some way, just as she had. In one way, it was unsettling to see them all broken, since she remembered all too well how they had looked before, but in another, it seemed fitting. After all, look at what she had survived. It was like a symbol of what she had been through.

 _How funny,_ she thought. _Once upon a time, you found the very existence of the tattoos disturbing, horrifying… and now you're actually lamenting the fact that they don't look the way they used to._ It was funny how things – _people_ – could change over time.

A few minutes later Kurt walked over to the table with coffee and a sandwich for her. He stopped beside her to put the plate and mug down off to the side, and then pulled the other chair over beside her to get a closer look at her drawing. He hadn't seen this one before, and he stared at it in surprise.

"Wow," he said simply. "That's… beautiful, Jane." Looking up at him and smiling proudly, she shook her head slightly.

"Thanks," she whispered, glancing between him and her sketchbook a little bit self-consciously. "I've started drawing them… you know… the way they look now…"

"It's really powerful like that," he said, laying his hand on her shoulder and squeezing it for a few seconds, then getting up again only reluctantly to retrieve his own food. He was back again in a minute, but by then she'd closed her sketchbook, gotten up from the table and set the book on the coffee table, not wanting to take the chance of something spilling on it. As he set down his plate and mug, he watched her pick up the familiar black long sleeved shirt that lay at the end of the couch. What had happened earlier all made sense, suddenly. She'd probably just forgotten to put it on when he'd arrived.

"You're going to be pretty hot in that," he told her, "It's warm in here today."

She just shrugged, shaking it out and looking for the tag so she'd know which way to put it on. In a few steps he was standing in front of her, his hand on her arm as gently as ever. "Jane, don't put that on on my account," he said softly. "If you want to, fine… but don't do it just because I'm here." He wasn't sure she would believe him, but despite his initial surprise, he really didn't care. It was more the fact that thinking about anyone hurting her, much less hurting her _that much_ had driven him past his breaking point.

"As a matter of fact…" he said, stepping back slightly and eyeing her tank top mischievously, "don't feel like you need to wear _that_ one on my account, either…"

Her eyes narrowed playfully at him, and she took two steps back before she threw her now balled up long sleeved shirt at his face. "Nice try, Weller," she laughed. He caught the shirt before it could fall on the floor, grinning, and then stepped forward to catch her hand before she could step any farther away. He might have been blushing a little – it was always hard to quite tell with the scruff on his face.

"Hey," he said, looking at her seriously for a second. "You're beautiful. I thought so from the first day I met you. You were beautiful then, and you're beautiful _now_. Okay?"

She stared into his eyes and felt her heart swell. _How are you even_ _ **real**_ _?_ she wondered. _I don't deserve this._ Several seconds went by in which they just stood there, watching each other, his hand still on her arm.

"Yes you do," he whispered, raising his eyebrows at her playfully and then letting them fall again quickly several times.

"I do what?" she asked defiantly, sure that he couldn't possibly know what she'd been thinking.

"Deserve all of this," he replied matter-of-factly – at which point her jaw dropped open and he couldn't contain his laughter. "You had the same look you always get on your face when you're thinking that," he told her. "There was one time, a long time ago, when you looked at me like that and I asked you what you were thinking. Same look." She just continued to stare at him, still in shock. "I know you," he grinned at her, now completely delighted with himself. "For example, I also know that—"

And so Jane did the only thing she could think of to get him to stop talking – she leaned forward and kissed him, not letting him stop to breathe until it was absolutely necessary, for fear that he'd restart the conversation just because he was so enjoying proving his point. When she did let them stop for air, she looked at him gleefully and said, "Oh yeah? Well I know _you_ , too."

"That you do," he smiled back at her. Then, glancing at the table, he saw the food that he'd prepared for them still sitting there, untouched. "Hey, we should eat before everything gets cold."

"Yes, we should," she agreed. "In just a minute." With that, she leaned forward to kiss him again, draping her arms over his shoulders. And who was he to argue with her logic? Of course they would eat… eventually…

That evening, they lay on the couch together watching a movie – neither of them remembered the name of the movie, and probably couldn't have given a coherent summary of the plot, either. They were in the same corner of the couch where they'd ended up on the night when Kurt had found Jane upstairs hiding from her nightmares. This time, Kurt was laying behind her, his right arm draped over her waist as he, unbeknownst to her at first, was studying the few of her scars that were visible from his angle. The tank top hid some of them, her angle on the couch hid others, but neither of these things hid all of them.

She didn't immediately know what he was doing when she felt fingertips moving along her skin, but when he touched one of the ones that was still sensitive, she figured it out quickly. He apologized immediately when she flinched, tensing up before his eyes. He withdrew his hand, wanting to do something to fix it but was momentarily afraid of hurting her, so he just leaned away. Rolling part way onto her back to look up at him, she smiled with only a hint of sadness. "You don't have to stop," she whispered, "Just… not _that_ one, okay?" He nodded, letting his fingers fall back to her upper back carefully, while avoiding the particularly sensitive spot as she rolled back onto her left side.

"Of course," he replied quietly, leaning down to kiss her bare shoulder, very glad that she had decided that she was comfortable in her tank top, at least around him. Instead of tracing any more of her scars, however, he simply wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against him tightly. No matter that he knew that she was more than capable of defending herself under any kind of normal circumstances. Their lives had already proven to be full of anything _but_ normal circumstances, and if he could have gotten away with never letting go of her again, of protecting her from anything and everything that could ever threaten to hurt her for the rest of her life, he would have done it. Of course, that was a bit of an issue, because her tendency to fiercely kick ass was one of the many things that he loved about her… and then there was the fact that she would never have let him shelter her so completely. So instead, he settled for just holding her tightly at that moment.

She sighed, her eyes falling closed as she gave in to the cloud of happiness that surrounded her. What had Kurt told her not too long ago? Something about how when he was with her, nothing else seemed to matter. That was exactly how she felt just then. Nothing else happening outside that room was important to her whatsoever at that moment. As if reading her mind, she heard a contented sigh from behind her, and smiled as she felt Kurt kiss her on the back of the neck, then lean his face into her hair.

"It's too good to be true, but it's still not a dream," he whispered from behind her. She squeezed her hands, which were clasped around his forearms, holding onto her so tightly, and leaned back against him happily. She wouldn't trade this moment for _anything_ in the world.

It _**wasn't**_ the first time that she'd been happy, though looking back, she could directly connect Kurt to all of the times when she _had_ been happy – that she could remember _._ Laying there with him, pretending to watch a movie but really just relishing the excuse to be so close to him, as she always did, she suddenly got the feeling that whatever lay ahead for them, the good stuff was only just beginning. Surely they'd been through enough Hell for more than one lifetime, possibly two or three.

It _**was**_ the first time, however, that after so much struggle, heartache and upheaval, she felt like she was starting to know who she was and where she belonged. She also knew that she never would have figured it out without the man who was holding onto her so tightly. Never mind that if he hadn't been there, she probably never would have been sent to the FBI and she probably would still have been Remi… He _had_ been there, and she _had_ been sent to him. Despite impossible odds, her happiness was because of him, and that was all that mattered now.

 _I know who I am now_ , she thought with wonder. _Being Jane actually_ _ **means**_ _something_. Not only did she feel like she knew who she was, but she also knew that she belonged exactly where she was at that moment – with Kurt, preferably just this close to him.

The rest of her first times lay ahead of her down the road, and suddenly, she could look forward to reaching them instead of just nervously waiting to see what would happen to her next. It was just like Kurt had said: as long as they were together, nothing else really mattered.

…

 _ **We just now got the feeling that we're meeting**_

 _ **For the first time.**_

…

 _A/N: Thank you, everyone, for reading this little voyage into the Blindspot past and a possible (however unlikely, but adorable) Jeller future. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have._


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